


In Search of Paradise

by Littlelambred



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Demon!Rythian, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-15 20:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/853885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlelambred/pseuds/Littlelambred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The angels have fallen from Heaven; demons have risen from the depths of Hell. Using Earth as their middle-ground, the two have waged war on one another, and the consequences are dire. A group of Rebels called the “Yogscast” are just trying to survive in an apocalypse of strange proportions.</p><p>But when a strange man named Rythian appears and begs for solace on his journey for purification, the group of rebels begin to question everything they’ve been taught. And, as the end of all days approaches, the group must make a choice: fight for Paradise, or succumb to the army of supernatural beings that threaten to destroy all of humanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1: October 7th, 2013

His eyes flit across the field, searching for any signs of life.

The Rebels have been acting out lately. He knows that it’s dangerous to come out in broad daylight, but he’s been getting desperate as his searches for food have started coming up empty. He’s running low on supplies, and there’s a nasty scratch on his shoulder that’s starting to fester. He’s worried about the symptoms that have recently been overcoming his body and whether or not they’re deadly.

In today’s world, he knows that they without a doubt are.

He crouches, poised to sprint, in a wheat field that flanks a rather large barn. He hopes that there will be something there; a first aid-kit, a blanket, anything that could possibly help him survive the night. He knows that his hopes are slim, but at this point he’s beyond caring. From what he knows, the Rebels have yet to take over this plot of territory, so he should be safe.

After a moment more of hesitation, he takes off, sprinting in an awkward but efficient position as he tries to hide behind the stalks of wheat around him. He thanks whatever gods there might be left in this world that it’s the middle of fall and that the grains are still tall.

He reaches the edge of the field and pauses, realising that he now has about a couple yards of empty space to cross before he’s safe. Even though the unkempt fields have spilled past their original boundaries now that there’s no one to tend to them, the fields still follow the basic shape they were given, and that shape leaves an area of ground bare around the barn entrance.

Sweating and hardly able to supress the shallow, needy pants that tear through his body, Rythian nearly collapses there and then. He’s so close, yet those last few meters might as well be miles for all they entail. If he can’t get the doors open in time, he’ll be caught, either by the Rebels or by a wandering Demon. And in his current condition, he’s anything but stealthy. The thought of surrendering crosses his mind briefly, but he supresses it before it can consume him.

He waits and listens, hopes and prays that no one can here the near-sobs that he still has to work hard to keep under control. After an exceptionally tense moment of silence, punctuated by the soft rustle of the wheat around him and his slowly calming pants, he crouches and then leaps, rolls and sprints again, reaching the barn doors in record time.

He yanks open one door, cringing at the loud protests it wails out and chastises himself for being so stupid, but slips in before he’s spotted. Once the door’s closed, he leans against it and lets his body fall limp, boneless against the support of the wood. He breaths in the scent of it and smiles to himself, relishing the smell of something other than sweat and rot. The world seems to reek of it nowadays, but out here in the untouched fields, everything smells clean and pure. The barn itself would normally be considered disgusting, but the homely smell of old wood and hay and leather makes Rythian happy in ways he can’t even fathom.

The sound of someone cocking a gun behind him snaps him out of his reverie. He whips around, despite his muscles’ screeches of protest, and growls. The guttural sound rips from his throat before he can stop it and he instantly regrets it.

On the other end of the rifle aimed at Rythian’s chest is a man who probably once could have been considered burly, but who has lost too much weight to be anything but frail. His face is twisted in a scowl that doesn’t waver, even when Rythian throws up his hands in defeat, handgun and switchblade each in a hand as he lowers them to the ground.

The man keeps the shotgun balanced in one hand as he reaches behind himself and pulls out a flask from his back pocket. Rythian’s confused for a moment, thinking to himself that this is hardly a time for a drink, but realises too late that whatever’s in the silver container is definitely not whiskey.

The top unscrews quickly and then the liquid come flying at him, aimed directly for his face and not missing its target. It splashes across his face and burns into him, sending up clouds of smoke wherever it makes contact with his skin and making him scream. The sound of his true voice echoes from his vessel’s throat, high pitched and reminiscent of a child’s wails. It sounds truly demonic. His eyes slip back into his head and shift from purple to an unholy black. He knows that the sight should be enough to unsettle a man, but the shotgun’s owner doesn’t even flinch as he splashes more of the holy water across Rythian’s face.

Rythian shrinks back into the barn door and sobs – an actual sob this time, out of pain and desperation – as he struggles to get the words out to ask for solace.

“Please.” His voice is deep and scratchy, whether from disuse or from the screaming, he doesn’t know, and it rings with a note of pleading that has his attacker pausing. “I’m in search of Paradise. I’ll leave and never come back, but please-“ The man splashes the rest of the contents of the flask onto Rythian’s face and then tucks it back into the waistband of his jeans.

“Paradise, huh?” The old man doesn’t lower the gun, but when Rythian looks up he’s met with a level but sympathetic look. “You know they don’t let your kind in there.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t try.” The old man ponders for a second, and then lowers the rifle. Rythian breathes a sigh and slumps back against the barn doors, his face and shoulder aching. He can already feel the welts from where the holy water burned him spreading across his cheeks and nose, but he doesn’t ponder on them once he smells whatever the farmer was working on.

“You gonna sit there all night, or are you gonna come over here and eat, Boy?” The farmer’s voice sounds far off, and when Rythian opens his eyes, he sees the man standing off in the corner over a shiny red barbeque. It looks out of place in the barn, but Rythian doesn’t ponder on its placement when the smell of cooking meats and the sight of bread is tantalizing him.

“Is that a barbeque?” Rythain’s mind doesn’t seem to be functioning properly. The only coherent thought he can form is “food”. His feet, however, have a mind of their own as they drag him across the barn to stand next to the old man. He’s smiling with this cocky smirk that makes Rythian feel fuzzy inside as the old man lifts up the hood of the barbeque to reveal a few patties of ground beef. Rythian swears that when it opens, there’s a chorus of angels calling out “Hallelujah”.

“You don’t think this is just a wheat farm, do ya, Boy?” The old man has an edge to his voice that makes Rythian laugh. He sounds hysterical even to his own ears, but the old man (bless his soul) ignores it in favour of picking up a pair of tongs and scooping up one of the patties to place on a plate alongside a piece of stale bread and some rice.

“You’ve got cattle, too?” Rythian accepts the plate that’s handed to him, as well as a long, still dirty carrot.

“Out back, behind the house.” The old man nods, twirling a peeler in one hand expertly before getting to work on the carrot. Despite his fragility, there’s something about the way the old man holds the blade that seems threatening, and the dull sting of the holy water burns on Rythian’s face reminds him that this man, for all intents and purposes, is a very large threat. Rythian suddenly regrets leaving his switchblade by the door.

The cooked meat in his lap, however, greatly outweighs any threat the man might pose.

They sit down up in the rafters with their feet dangling off the edge. While some people are scared of heights, Rythian finds them comforting. Watching the ground beneath him makes him feel in control. With the smell of meat and fresh vegetables calling to him, Rythian almost feels normal.

Rythian’s hand is slapped away before he can dig in, though, and the old man scolds him before Rythian can protest.

“Now, you might not care about this what with you bein’ a...” He motions towards Rythian with the carrot peeler, waving it around in his general silhouette “and all,”

“But I don’t like to eat before thankin’ the Lord for what he’s blessed me with. Now, you can go ahead and be silent, I don’t mind, but you’re not eatin’ before I’m done with this, okay?”

Rythian just nods. He takes the carrot peeler obediently when offered and bends his head to work. The farmer’s voice drifts through his head as he works and fills his mind with the words. Never in his life has he ever heard anyone say these prayers around him, but for all he’s expected it to be, it’s actually very calming. The man’s gratitude is evident in his voice as he finishes off the last few sentences, and by the end of it, even though his carrot’s clean of its skin, Rythian keeps his head bowed and his eyes shut.

He doesn’t even realise that the man’s stopped talking until he feels an elbow nudge his side.

“Thank you.” Rythian nods towards the man before digging in.

The taste of cooked meat and fresh carrots is one of the most amazing experiences he’s ever had in his life. The feeling of real foods being eaten instead of that protein powder crap he’d scrounged up surpasses everything he’s ever felt. He doesn’t even mind that the bread’s stale and dry or that the rice is overcooked. It’s real, honest to goodness food.

“So,” The old man breaks the comfortable silence they’ve fallen into. His feet swing like a child’s, slicing through the air fearlessly. He chews for a few more moments, and then swallows. “Why are you searching for Paradise? You know that, if it even exists, they’ll just kill you on the spot, right?”

“I know.” Rythian took another large bite of beef, effectively putting a wedge in their conversation. Before, his bites had been large and frantic, but now he took his time, chewing slowly. 

He knew that he wouldn’t survive if he did make it to Paradise. It was a fact that Paradise was one of the only “Demon-Free” zones on the planet, although its whereabouts were unknown, and whether or not it existed was another question altogether. But Rythian longed for the idea of Paradise still; he hoped for the purification that the journey entailed. The search for Paradise was a sort of Purgatory for him.

“But you’re still headed there?” The old man bit down into his carrot, filling the room with the crack it made as he crunched down. In the distance, a cow could be heard moo-ing.

“Yeah.” Rythian scoops the last of his beef and rice into the bread and holds it in front of his lips, poised to finish it off. “I’m a bit of an ugly-duckling. Always have been. Not very fond of demons myself.” That last part earns him a laugh from the old man. The fizzy feeling returns in the pit of his stomach. The old man has a loud, booming laughter, somewhere between a choke and a guffaw, and he throws his whole body into it. His head thrown back and his eyes scrunched up, he looks young and old at the same time; young in his happiness but old where the crows-feet around his eyes crinkle.

His laughter subsides until they’re left in silence again, save for the occasional crunch of a carrot or the chewy tearing noise made whenever they tried to bite into the bread.

“You remind me a lot of my son, y’know that?” The old man’s eyes glaze over as his eyes focus on a point across from them. “He went lookin’ for Paradise too.”

His silence suggested that his son didn’t find Paradise, and Rythian decided that it wasn’t a good idea to pry.

Rythian cleared his throat and set the paper plate down next to his feet. His stomach ached from its fullness. Not a year earlier, he would have been barely satisfied, but now, after months of hunger and foraging, the meal was like a dead weight in his stomach, weighing him down with sleep and contentment.

“Listen, I’m sorry for any inconvenience,” Rythian began. “But I was just wondering if I could stay the night. I promise, I’ll get out of your hair in the morning, but the sun’s setting, and I’m beat…”

The old man waved him off, smiling. His eyes were glassy with held back tears and Rythian suddenly felt invasive. This man was bearing a part of his soul to Rythian, a lowly demon possessing a dead man’s body, and he had nothing to give in return.

“You stay as long as you like, Boy.” The old man nodded to Rythian’s shoulder. For the first time since his mad-dash to the barn, Rythian felt the ever present throb of pain in the wound. “I’ll even fix you up.”

Rythian’s surprised by the old man’s hospitality, but gratefully agrees. The old man smiles down at him, instructs him to lie down on one of the bales of hay underneath them, and then leaves in search of a first-aid kit.

“I never got your name.” Rythian calls out once he’s settled in. He gingerly weasels his way out of his jacket and t-shirt, wrinkling his nose in distaste at the overall grunginess of the blood and sweat soaked fabric. The old man’s head pops up a moment later as he replaces on of the floorboards with a retrieved plastic case. On the front is a faded and cracked red cross.

“Frederic. Frederic Jones.” Frederic smiles and opens the case, exposing the bare supplies inside. With deft fingers, he picks up an antiseptic wipe and unwraps it with his teeth.

“Rythian.” Rythian replies as he braces himself for the sting of the cleanser. Fred whistles under his breath as he examines the wound. Rythian himself hasn’t really gotten a chance to take a good look at the wound, but once he sees it up close he realises that it’s not just the average run-of-the-mill scratch.

The skin around the cut is shiny and inflamed, pulled taut and covered in a thin film of sweat. Around the edges there’s a strange, yellow crystallization and flecks of blood. Grotesque veins are visible through the skin, snaking down his arm and up his collarbone from the wound. 

“You got a last name, Rythian?” Fredric winces along with Rythian when he starts dabbing at the scratch. The skin sticks to the cloth and peels upwards, following the material with a sticky persistence. It’s started bleeding again, and there are swirls of something yellow and thick pulsing out too.

“Nope.” Rythian clenches his teeth as Fred’s fingers poke around the wound, squeezing out some of the pus. A bottle of rubbing alcohol lays next to them in the case, and Fred reaches for it before Rythian can pull away.

The liquid burns almost as badly as the holy water when it hits his skin. The blood and other bodily fluids on his shoulder hiss and bubble, turning to froths of different colours as the alcohol reacts with them. He watches as Fredric wipes away the foam, revealing a jagged cut on Rythian’s shoulder that’s slowly oozing out thick, dark liquids.

It takes a few more swigs of alcohol to clean the wound, and then Rythian finds himself patched up with a makeshift bandage made from an old drape Fred found in the back. Fredric hands him a half-empty bottle of Whiskey which Rythian accepts gladly. The warm liquid burns a trail down his throat, but he eagerly accepts the heat over the pain.

“Get some sleep, okay? I’ll help you get packed up and on your way in the morning.” Fred nods to him and hands him a blanket. Rythian takes one more long guzzle from the bottle, raising it to his lips with all the finesse of a giraffe on ice, and then hands it back to accept what else is being offered to him. The bandage and the screaming in Rythian’s shoulder make it difficult for him to find a comfortable position, but once he does, despite the few pieces of straw that had rebelled and were jabbing their way into his skin, he falls asleep quickly and contently, drunk and full.

 

“Wake up, Boy!” Fred’s voice is screaming at him, dragging him out of the depths of sleep. “Wake up!”

Rythian blinks himself awake, ears ringing with some horrible noise that threatens to shatter glass, tangled in his blanket and still caught in the last few dregs of sleep that cling to his brain like cobwebs. A sound like children crying and rusty hinges squealing fills the air alongside Fred’s yells, splitting Rythian’s thoughts in two. One half of his thoughts scream at him to roll over, just go back to sleep, while the other half tell him to just run.

When his eyes focus, he’s suddenly face-to-face with a snarling, curled face. It’s twisted into a sneer, pointed teeth bared and its black eyes slit in a malicious mask that’ll put all your nightmares combined to shame. Across the roof and walls, everywhere, there are shadows of wings and twisted bodies.

Demons.

The demons are everywhere.

They don’t attack Rythian because they know what he is; a demon, just like them. Instead, they swoop down on Fred, circling around him, reaching out like a wave that threatens to pull you under at any moment. He’s perched on the fifth rung of the ladder that leads up to the rafters, but there’s no way he’ll make it. A hand is clasped around his calf, another snakes its way up his thigh. He’s clinging to life with one arm that’s been wedged between two bars. Another anonymous hand is already working on prying his arm out from between them.

Rythian can feel the thoughts of the attacking demons protruding, slicing through the air at random intervals in chants of “kill, kill, kill” and “feed, feed, feed”

Instinct tells him to join; sense tells him to run.

He stumbles free of the blanket that kept him captive and scrambles to gather his belongings. He manages to grasp his coat and gun until he hears the crack. The indescribable sound of a bone cracking. Frederic shouts out something, a name maybe, but it can’t be heard over the keening of the crowd of monsters. A jug of water lays overturned on the ground, spilling out in a pool that the attackers avoid like the plague.

Rythian turns around and fires, unthinking, at the demons. He hits one and it whirls; the other one he hits falls to its knees and doesn’t get up. Fred is limp in the sea of demons, his mouth opened in a silent plea before the wall of hands and heads descend on him and the sound of tearing skin fills the air.

The wounded demon that he hit is closing in on him while the others are distracted. A thought pushes into his head as his brethren advances: “Brother, Brother, Brother”

It slowly melts into something that sounds vaguely like “Traitor, Traitor, Traitor”

A telepathic cry of victory of their catch rises up, breaking the barrier of Rythian’s thoughts with one long, excruciatingly loud screech that sounds like tires on hot asphalt.

Rythian raises the gun and aims for the advancing demon’s head. His back hits the barn door and he fires, hitting his target dead-on. A few demons that have lost interest in their hunt turn on him in time to see their comrade jerk and then still, dead on the hay covered ground.

Rythian yanks open the barn door before they can register what’s happening and slips out. His brain is whirling on the head of a pin and he’s suddenly overcome with a sense of vertigo that rivals gravity. He can’t feel the ground beneath his feet, but he wills himself to at least try to run and pushes on.

Under the cover of night and hidden by the garden of unkempt wheat, Rythian sprints for his life and doesn’t look back.


	2. October 8th, 2013

He runs until he can’t run anymore.

He runs home blindly, thanking his lucky stars that he’s made this trip a hundred and one times over while scouting out the area. He doesn’t pay attention to anything except the fading heat of the demons in his mental link.

He reaches his run-down shack of a house by the time the sun starts rising. He doesn’t even bother latching the front gate once he’s past the wooden fence; he leaves it swung wide open and doesn’t give two shits about what might wander in.

He’s panicky and upset and anxious and he just wants out. He’s making irrational plans in his head to escape this city as soon as possible and to head out wherever he feels best. He used to have a plan, but screw, screw the plan. He can’t breathe and there’s something wet running down his face and he feels dirty, he feels dirty all over and he doesn’t want to be here anymore. He wants the situation to be different; he wants to be human and not to have to hear the endless repetition of the same clicks and screeches over and over and over again through his link.

He decides to run. He’ll hotwire a car, or he’ll find a bike, or he’ll just fucking walk, but he’s not staying here any longer.

The image of Frederic under the sea of demons is still fresh in his memory as his adrenalin levels peak out of anxiety. He’s shaky, and he drops his bags more than once in his haste, but none of that deters him from preparing to leave. The slice on his shoulder screams in protest each time he moves too frantically, but it’s drowned out by the victory cry that still rings in his ears.

A victory cry he’d been so tempted to join in on.

He smashes things too. He goes into the kitchen and takes every dish out of the cupboards and launches them across the room. The sound of each one shattering against the walls is satisfying, so he does it again, and again, and again until there’s nothing left but a sea of white ceramics and glass at his feet. He upturns a few chairs, as well and tips over a television set.

He understands now why humans like rioting so much. Breaking things is a very calming practice.

Once he’s gotten as much adrenaline out of his system as he can using only the means of destruction, he picks up where he left off and tries to ignore the scratches and bruises that litter his body while he throws together what little things he needs.

He shucks off his shirt once he’s decided he’s done and shuffles into the bathroom. With a tired exhale, he turns the sink on and accepts the cold water that pours out. He squats and pulls a face-cloth out from under the sink and then wets it.

He pointedly ignores his reflection until he has no choice but to look up.

A thin, pointed face stares back at him, one eye’s squinted and puffy from a scratch that slices across it – he must have gotten it while running from the farm – and he sets out to clean that first. He doesn’t dwell on the colour of his eyes – black – for too long. He used to find it fascinating, but now it’s just an awkward reminder that this isn’t his body.

Once he feels that his eyes have had enough attention from the cold cloth, he moves to his hairline and proceeds to scrub down his face with the fabric, paying attention to not irritate the fading welts across his cheeks. It takes a few more tries, but he manages to clean off most of the grime that’s covered his face. He runs a hand over his chin and inspects his stubble; he could do with a shave, but he’s fresh out of razors, and he doesn’t trust the serrated edge on his switchblade.

He lets the cold water run over his hands and then his wrists, and then soon he’s so enraptured with the calming effect of the water that he’s rummaging around under the counter to try and find a clean towel. He flicks off the sink just before turning and pulling back the shower curtain. He turns the water on full blast and steps in without bothering to close the curtain behind himself.

The water’s freezing and goose bumps quickly rise on his skin, but he pays them no mind as he shoves his head under the spray. He scrubs his head furiously with his fingers until his skin is raw and then rubs himself down with soap. His shoulder feels like fire and is protesting greatly against the water, but he just moves so that it’s directly under the water and waits until it goes numb. He doesn’t step out until his teeth are chattering.

Once he does, he quickly yanks the towel around his body, drying off his skin with quick back-forth motions and then rubbing it through his hair. His whole body’s raw and he can feel each and every individual hair standing erect on his body, but that’s all in the back of his head.

He’ll leave at nightfall, he’s decided.

He drops his towel somewhere between the bathroom and the master bedroom. He reaches out to prod around the block: so far, everything’s clear, but there’s the faint chill of an angel somewhere south of Rythian’s safe house. He hopes that it doesn’t cause him too much trouble.

He pads barefoot to the bedroom and rummages around in his bag until he finds a clean pair of shorts. He takes a moment to consider his options, and then he tugs a shirt and sweats on as well.

He slides into the bed and wraps himself in a cocoon of blankets and pillows. He’s slept like this ever since he’d possessed this vessel. When he closes his eyes, he pretends that the image of Frederic isn’t burned into his eyelids. He shuts himself out from any telepathic communication, which is a dangerous move because that’s the only way he’ll know if anything gets within close-proximity, but right now he can’t take the weight of the mind-link without the battle cry reverberating around in his skull.

It had never sounded that terrifying when he’d been taking part.

He sighs and reaches up from under the blankets to rub at his temples. He wills himself to sleep while tugging the blankets up to his chin.

It takes about an hour, but he finally falls asleep with nothing but his own breathing as background noise. He’s not used to the silence; he usually sleeps submerged in his mind-link, lulled by the background noise of his mother tongue being spoken by strange demons he’s never met before.

Because of this, he usually never sleeps well; his brain is normally too caught up in the conversations of others to let him fade out completely. It’s rare that he ever dreams, but tonight is one of those few nights where he does.

And this time, when he dreams, he dreams of Paradise.

He dreams of making it there, and being shot upon entry.

~

He awakens to the sound of a door opening.

His sleep had been restless and plagued by musing of Paradise. It hadn’t been a particularly good night, but it was still better than most nights. Good sleep was starting to get harder and harder to come by without the use of alcohol or drugs, both of which he was fresh out of.

Gingerly, he slides out of bed and grabs a gun from the side table. His senses are on high-alert now, his interest piqued when he hears the sound of glass and porcelain chips scraping against linoleum floors.

He cocks the gun and holds it in outstretched arms, pointed towards the floor. His body moves stiffly but fluidly; he’s silent in his approach.

He reaches a vantage point in the hall and halts. Standing in the kitchen, ankle-deep in broken glass, is a man with long-ish blond hair and a coat that was probably once white, but now is stained with dirt, dust and, unsurprisingly, blood.

Rythian steps in the room, still undetected. He can hear the man’s unimpressed grunts from where his head is obscured by the cupboards. He’s clearly not impressed with how Rythian’s already cleared out everything of importance, and smashed everything else.

Rythian advances slowly until he’s close enough to press the gun against the man’s back. He feels the intruder go stiff and presses harder into his spine, digging the metal in threateningly.

“Howdy, Stranger.” Rythian leans over the stranger’s shoulder and breaths the words down his neck, voice pitched low with a warning tone. “You wanna explain what you’re doing here?”

Rythian can feel the man’s chest swell as he prepares to speak, but the sound of footsteps down the adjacent hallway interrupts his threat. The blond man shoves back, into Rythian and overthrows him. Rythian lands on the ground with a loud thud and his head whips back along with him, smashing against the floor with a loud crack. The looter straddles Rythian’s legs and fights for control as Rythian growls out curses.

Shards of porcelain and glass embed themselves in Rythian’s skull and back as the man on top of him presses him further into the linoleum. He feels the particular burn of one shard of glass as it presses into his lower-back. His earlier attempts to calm himself through means of destroying every glass object in the house suddenly seem ridiculous and unnecessary, now that Rythian’s feeling the full force of them.

Two pairs of footsteps are heard thundering down the adjacent hallway, and Rythian realises just how handy his telekinesis would be at that moment. He experimentally reaches out and probes at the body above him. The blond man shifts a little and presses down harder on Rythian’s thighs. Exposing himself now will do him no good, he decides, but he keeps the link open just in case he needs to run.

“A little help would be great here, Sjin.” The blond man grunts out. Rythian growls something unintelligible back and shoves his knee up between his attacker’s legs. His blue eyes open wide for a moment as his face flushes red. He loses his grip just long enough for Rythian to rip his arm out from under him and shove it into Blue-eye’s nose. He’s satisfied when he hears a crack and then rolls away as Blue-eyes doubles over.

“Sjin” apparently isn’t alone, however, because almost as soon as Rythian’s struggling to his feet, a man with a ridiculous looking black bowl-cut jumps out from seemingly nowhere through the opposite doorway in the kitchen. One of his arms is around Rythian’s neck as the other snakes around to pry the gun from Rythian’s hand within seconds. Rythian’s seriously considering just sending out a shockwave through his mind-link to turn their brains to jelly, but he’s cut off from him murderous musing when “Sjin” speaks.

“Drop your weapon.” His voice has a strange lilt to it that makes the demand seem comical, not scary. Paired with his thick moustache-and-beard combo, he seems like someone who’d run a circus; not like someone who’d shoot you for defending yourself against looters. Rythian spits out something that was supposed to sound like a cuss, but Bowl-cut hugs him tighter around the neck just as he’s about to, and all that comes out is a gasp.

“Drop your weapon.” Sjin repeats. Rythian disgruntledly complies and drops the gun. Bowl-cut loosens his hold on Rythian’s throat a bit and Rythian finds himself gasping for air he hadn’t even realised he was missing.

The whole room seems to calm down a bit once the gun is out of Rythian’s hand. The sound of blood pounding in his ears is still greatly magnified, but the anxiety that thickened the air thins out a bit. Sjin steps forward to pick up Rythian’s gun and then tucks it into the waistband of his jeans. Bowl-cut lets Rythian go, but hovers close just in case.

Rythian almost laughs once he gets a good look at them. Thick-moustache guy is tall and thin, while Bowl-cut is shorter and squat. Blondie is somewhere in the middle, only just a bit taller than Bowl-cut but not as thin as Mr. Moustache.

“What’s your name?” Moustache asks, speaking with his strange accent again. Rythian turns his attention towards him and keeps his face and voice dead-pan when he answers.

“Rythian.”

“Interesting name.” Sjin doesn’t lower his gun, but he does seem to relax now that Rythian’s at least given him something to go off of. He introduces himself again as Sjin, and then he nods towards Blue-eyes and Bowl-cut and names them both as Lalna and Sips.

“You a part of the Rebellion?” Rythian asks, wary of their answer. If they say yes, his chances of survival suddenly drop about twenty percent. The Rebels have already threatened him twice; he’d rather not make that three times.

“Not really.” Sips says from behind him. Rythian tilts his head awkwardly over his shoulder to get a good look at Sips, who’s holding his gun in his hand carelessly, as if it weren’t capable of blowing his brains out with an accidental press of the trigger. “We’re not exactly pro-angels or demons, but we’re not really ‘Rebels’ either.”

“We’re a separate organisation.” Sjin explains. His shoulders are visibly relaxing and he’s started waving around his gun like Sips did, carelessly and in motions that serve to add emphasis to his explanation. “We’re called ‘The Yogscast’.”

Rythian snorts at the name and is rewarded with two simultaneous glares. Lalna continues on glaring from over his fingers as he tries to set his nose in place to stop the bleeding.

“Fine, sorry.” Rythian raises his hands in defeat before asking his million-dollar question:

“You guys looking for anything in particular?”

Lalna makes a squeaking noise and glares up at Rythian. His fingers are coming away red where he holds his face.

“Anything. Food, clothing, medicinal supplies.” Sjin lists off things as they come to him.

“Well, I’m kind of low on supplies already. I’ve packed up everything I need. I was planning on leaving tonight, so the house is empty.” Rythian shrugs and tries to shimmy past Sips to make it to the doorway. Sips and Sjin tense simultaneously, and Rythian starts to get a little freaked out with how in sync they appear to be.

They have a mini-conversation without actually speaking, and it’s Sjin who nods to let him leave.

Rythian smiles and gives them a thumbs-up gesture before skirting past Sips, whose attention is being drawn to the stumbling figure of Lalna, who’s attempting to right himself. A streak of blood runs down his lips and over his chin. His hands are covered in it, too.

“Hey, can you guys hear that?” Rythian calls from behind his half-open door. He can hear something, a low hiss that seems to be coming from outside the house. He stop to listen and flinches when the sound gets louder.

The three looters have moved to the front room. Lalna’s wiping away the last remanents of blood that’s drying on his face, but he appears well besides the slight tremble in his knees. He scowls and pulls out a silver flask from a pocket on his coat. Sips opens his mouth to protest, but he tilts it back and takes a drink from I before he can be stopped.

“That hissing noise?” Sjin confirms with Rythian, his moustache and beard moving along with his words. “Yeah, I can hear it too.”

Lalna tucks away the flask and wipes away a bead of liquid that escaped his lips. “You don’t think it’s a –“

“Creeper?” Sips finishes for him. The silence they fall into is punctuated by a long, high-pitched hiss that fills the air.

“Shit.” Rythian stretches out his link and probes around the block, only to be met with the fiery warmth that signals the presence of a creeper.

Creepers are the result of an extremely powerful demon possessing a body that can’t withstand their power. Their physical appearance becomes distorted, and theie bodies typically break out with oozing sores. Their bodies contort under the strength of the demon, and they hunch over until they walk on all fours. Their vocal chords normally tear from the over exertion of them trying to speak their mother-tongue in their human vessel, which results in them being able to only make one noise: a long string of hisses that intensifies the closer they get to human flesh.

They also have a tendency to explode with the same amount of force as a pound of C-4.

“Back-door, that way.” Rythian jerks his head towards the hallway to the left of the kitchen. Sips, Sjin and Lalna all nod in agreement as they all rush towards the exit.

Sips cracks open the door and steps out first. It’s dark outside and the motion sensor lights flick on the moment they start moving across the backyard.

The hissing intensifies and gets closer as the light draws in the creeper.

“Shit.” Lalna’s voice is nasally through his swollen nose.

They’re suddenly pressed for time as the creeper’s hand grasps the top of the fence to haul itself over. A gnarled face pokes over the top of the wooden fence and sneers. Rythian can see it start to shake with excitement. Its hissing is almost deafening now.

“The Jeep’s just down the block.” Sips is yanking the fence gate open and ushering them through. Rythian keeps glancing back at the creeper; he can feel its thoughts and knows just how close to losing control it is.

They sprint to the jeep with Sjin in front and Sips at the rear. Rythian’s trying not to act too strangely, but his thoughts are focused on the creeper. The creeper’s voice in Rythian’s head is repeating a series of clicks and screeches that are usually reserved for the battle field. They echo through Rythian’s skull, even after he shuts down the mind-link. He finds himself struggling not to join in.

The jeep’s a big, black monster of a car. It’s an intimidating silhouette in the silver light of the moon, casting barely-visible shadows. The moonlight makes its edges looks sharper, and it’s so glossy that Rythian can see himself in it when he approaches.

The hissing’s getting quieter. Creepers, while incredibly dangerous, have a very short attention span, and can be escaped easily if you get far enough away.

Lalna and Sjin hop in the front seat; Rythian finds himself dragged into the backseat by Sips. He hasn’t even closed the door before the car’s roaring down the street.

“Welcome to the Yogscast.” Sjin speaks up from the driver’s seat. Lalna’s still tenderly cupping his nose, and Rythian can already see the dark bruising that’s spreading out over his cheeks and eyes. The blond leans forward and cranks up the volume on the stereo until Rythian’s sure his ears are going to start bleeding. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” is half-way through playing.

~

They reach their destination in an hour. Rythian sits through the entire ride sneering as track after track of loud, obnoxious music blares through the car’s speakers. It isn’t until they near the city that Sjin (begrudgingly) turns off the music.

Sometime between their destination and their entry of the city, Rythian feels what feels like a wall slam into him. He feels nauseated as they drive through the worst of the wall, and then slowly, it begins to lessen. A horrid smell filters through the car’s ventilation system, and Lalna crinkles his nose in distaste, but then thinks better than to do it when his nose pulls awkwardly.

It’s the smell of asafetida, an herb that specialises in ward off evil spirits. If Rythian had been walking, he would have turned back immediately, but the car drags him through the protective barrier forcefully.

“You see that big building up ahead?” Sips acts as tour-guide throughout their trip. He’s pointing at a large skyscraper that shoots straight up for miles. At the top, there’s a large, broken down “S” insignia. Rythian guesses that it used to be a hotel. “That’s our home.”

“Interesting choice.” Rythian comments. “But do you really need all that room for three people?”

Lalna turns to him from the front-seat and rolls his eyes. The skin around them has turned shiny and purple, and his nose is still bent awkwardly. Rythian tries to find it in himself to feel sorry, but he’s really not. Lalna’s been an ass to Rythian the whole drive.

Rythian probably deserves it, but whatever.

“There’s a lot more than three of us living there, you doofus.” Lalna’s voice was getting thick, and the way he pronounced “doofus” made the word almost unintelligible.

“How many, then?” Rythian squints to try and see out the darkly tinted windows. They’re approaching a tall chain-link fence that’s being guarded by what appears to be heavily guarded men and women.

“Try hundreds.” Sips explains. The jeep rolls to a stop, jerking its passengers forwards a bit. Someone outside the car knocks on the driver’s side window, which then rolls down slowly. A dark-haired head pokes in and surveys the group.

“Find anything good?” His voice was deep a gruff, and Rythian thought it was almost cliché to think that this man was as heavily armed as he was.

“Besides the ass-hat that smashed my face in?” Lalna pipes up. He’s lying, boneless, in the front-seat and smells heavily of cheap whiskey. “No, not really.”

The new face turns to give Rythian a once-over. His shirt and pants were as clean as he’d been able to get them through means of hand-washing them in the bathtub in the house he’d been squatting in, but there were still splotches of dirt and blood that he hadn’t been able to get out, even after hours of scrubbing. Under this stranger’s scrutinizing glare, Rythian felt awkward and exposed.

“What’s your name?” Dark-hair asks.

“Rythian.” He replies curtly. He keeps eye contact for a few more moments until Dark-hair’s eye’s crinkle with a hidden smirk.

“Interesting.” He nods and pulls his head out of the car. “You can call me Strippin.” He taps the car’s roof twice and two men suddenly swoop in to open the fence. They’re both equally heavily armed.

They pull into the roundabout in front of the hotel and are swarmed with people. Someone replaces Sjin at the wheel while three other people, two women and one man, usher Rythian and the rest of the group out of the car. The doctors are urging them inside while two more men, both extremely well-muscled and intimidating, fall in to step beside Rythian.

They enter the lobby, which has been rearranged in the best of intentions with barricades and stashes of weapons. A group of people stop whatever they’re doing to look up at Rythian with brimming curiosity. Rythian looks away and tries to focus on the backs of Lalna and Sjin, who are both flanked by doctors as they’re asked question after question.

One doctor drops back and starts poking around at Rythian. He asks him questions like “Are you feeling disorientated?” and “Have you been eating properly?”

“No, I’m-“ A hand starts prodding around his side and Rythian has to fight the urge to bat it away. He growls angrily and pushes past the doctor. “If you touch me again, I swear on my mother, I will punch you in the face.”

One of his body-guards (who has been nicknamed Dragon for the time being) puts a hand on his shoulder and he winces as pain flares through it. The gash on his shoulder is brought to full attention when Dragon squeezes lightly.

“Are you injured?” The doctor asks. Rythian groans and nods, defeated. They’re ushered into an elevator, where the doctor proceeds to shoo off Rythian’s bodyguards. Caveman (the other bodyguard) is uncertain, but the doctor gives him a glare that could level the Earth and Caveman thinks otherwise.

“Is it your shoulder?” He leans over Rythian and examines the stain that’s formed in the shape of his wound. A strand of brown hair escapes from his otherwise perfectly swept-back hair and he has to keep reaching up to fix it. His face tightens in a concentrated pout as he prods around Rythian’s shoulder.

“Ow, stop that.”

“Stop whining or I will find a very imaginative place to shove this stethoscope.” The doctor warns. His green eyes grow cold, and Rythian proceeds to shut his trap without further urging.

He’s led into a strange, white room where the doctor (who he had found out was named “Xephos”) proceeds to order him around.

“Take off your shirt, sit down there and don’t touch anything unless I say so.” He points a threatening finger at Rythian. “Capisce?”

Rythian only nods in agreement. Xephos turns his back to Rythian and begins addressing Lalna as Rythian works to get his shirt off without causing too much harm.

“Have you been drinking?” Xephos questions. He prods around, taking a pulse here or brushing at Lalna’s nose to check the swelling. Lalna should be wincing, but his eyes are heavily-lidded and his cheeks are flushed; he’s so drunk he’s stumbling over his words as he tries to keep up with Xephos’ questions.

“No.” He’s smiling a crooked, goofy smile. “Maybe. Yes.”

Xephos groans and looks up towards the ceiling. “Maurice, can you please help Mr. Jo-“

“My last name is Coffee.” Lalna slurs.

“Coffee, sorry.” Xephos sighs. “Can you please set Mr. Coffee’s nose?”

Rythian is about to make some snarky comment, but he stops when he catches a glimpse of the look Lalna’s giving Xephos. While Lalna looks more buzzed than upset, Xephos is looking down on him with a confusing mix of annoyance, pity and…

Fondness. They must be close, because Xephos rolls his eyes and hits him lightly on the arm.

“I don’t want you drinking while you’re in jobs anymore, either.” He gives Lalna a glare and points a warning finger at him. “I’m serious. Speaking as your doctor, I’m telling you, no more drinking while working.” His voice turns icy.

“Sure, Xephos.” Lalna grins up at Xephos blearily, only to cry out rather loudly when “Maurice” starts working on his nose.

Xephos turns towards Rythian and claps his hands together. His eyes are shiny with some foreign emotion, but then he blinks and his expression sobers.

“Let’s take a look at that shoulder, hmm?”

They spend the rest of Rythian’s stay in silence. He spends that time examining his surroundings by doing a mental sweep of the area.

The building is populated by humans; he can tell because of the warm, squishy feeling he gets every time he prods around.

Humans are warm - pleasant even. They radiate a feeling that just breaths humanity.

Demons are hot. They’re boiling, overpowering infernos that expel putrid energies and leave you feeling dead inside.

Angels are cold. They feel like marble; they’re cold, hard and unfeeling. They give off nothing, but they fill you with an overwhelming sense of fulfilment.

It’s that feeling, that cold, unwelcoming feeling that Rythian senses from the top floor of the building.

And if he can sense the angel, then the angel can most definitely sense him.

His eyes snap open as he realises just what he’s been led into.

“Fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This can also be found on Tumblr, under the same name.  
> Special thanks to the lovely phoenixishere4life and sheepwhoarepurple for Beta-Reading this story for me. They are both such amazing people, and they're the main reason for my writing this.


	3. October 9th, 2013

His wings unfurl behind him as warnings flash through his mind at top speed. They tear through the veil, invisible to the human eye but none the less tangible. They stretch and curl with a mind of their own, beating at the air angrily. He thanks whoever that they exist on another plane of existence and that no one around can see just how upset he actually is.

“Are you okay, Rythian?” Xephos is tilting Rythian’s head between his hands to examine the fading welts, but his motions stop when he catches Rythian’s eye. “Your pupils are dilated as fuck.”

His chest feels tight and he’s having trouble breathing. One of his feet bounces without a rhythm; he wants to run as far away as possible. He doesn’t like it here – it’s not safe.

“I’m fine.” He manages to choke out the response without growling or making any sort of demonic noise that might tip anyone off. He can feel his heart hammering in his chest and all he can think about is running, running as far away as possible and never coming back.

He reaches out again and, sure enough, there it is. He wasn’t mistaken, there’s a fucking angel in the building and he’s-

Oh Lucifer, have mercy, the angel’s moving towards the infirmary.

His wings are tense and taut behind him, stretched to the point of discomfort as he tries to assert dominance. He works hard to keep his eyes from rolling back into his head and slipping into their natural state, but he can feel his façade weakening. With each breath, his eyelids feel heavier, and he can feel his pupils expanding past their border. He’s scared to blink in case they do happen to give in to the feral urges Rythian’s competitor is bringing out in him.

His lips part and he starts fucking keening. Ever nerve in his body is sparking with adrenaline and he just wants to run, to fight, to kill. His head snaps backwards and his back arches painfully as his wings stretch too far.

“You’re not fine; your pulse is through the roof!” Xephos turns and starts barking out orders while simultaneously working his hands over Rythian’s pulse point under his chin. He’s pressing Rythian into the bed with the help of two nurses; they must think that Rythian’s having a seizure or something. Rythian can feel his mind link sparking with energy and all he wants to do is feed, feed, feed.

The angel reaches out to prod at Rythian’s mind through an unrequited mind-link. Rythian slams up every barrier he can and grits his teeth in pain as the angel pushes past them. The noises in his throat rise to shrieks and his wings begin beating in frustration. They’re trapped between him and the bed, causing them to twist awkwardly. The angel breaks the wall in his head and begins rifling through his memories. Questions are pushed through, and well as accusations.

Something about a rubber duck wiggles its way in there, too.

His head tilts back as pain ricochets through his head. He arches off the bed, eyes shut tightly and hands balled into fists. He just wants to kill. 

The angel starts prodding through his brain with a forceful press and tug that’s sending shockwaves of some sort of personal agony through Rythian’s body.

And then it’s gone. All of it, every sensation he’s felt while silently panicking over the arrival of the angel is washed away with the slightest effort. Rythian falls limp, but his head is still whirring with instinctive threats.

The infirmary door opens, then shuts, and a man in a nice suit and a long, brown coat with gold stitching steps in with his arms tucked neatly behind his back.

The Angel.

Angels and demons are designed to hate each other. It’s hardwired into their brains, quite literally, to want to tear the other’s throat out without provocation. Demons are a disgrace to angels; they’re the spawn of sinners and of fallen angels; angels are pompous, overachieving warriors ho follow orders too precisely and who will stop at nothing to do what they consider “right”.

This angel’s exactly what Rythian had been expecting. His posture is rigid and his hands are folded neatly behind him in a military-esque gesture that signifies dominance; his hair and suit are without imperfection (although his jacket is baggy and hangs off him as if it were a few sizes too big) and his smile is patronizing. His eyes fall on Rythian, and a slow, dangerous smile works its way across the angel’s face.

“Hello.” His voice is crisp with an unspoken threat. He’s staring Rythian down and Rythian has to work hard not to lunge and sink his teeth into this guy’s throat. The instinctive ring of kill, kill, kill is buzzing in his ears. “You must be Rythian.”

At Rythian’s silence, the smile stretches wider and exposes a slip of bright white teeth. He presses another question through their link so forcefully that Rythian flinches. Xephos circles around to stand between the angel and Rythian – unknowingly of course, because he’s just doing his job at the moment, and Rythian’s still coming down from his adrenalin-fueled high. His blue eyes are swimming with unanswered question, but Rythian doesn’t care about right now, because there’s a fucking angel in the room. 

“Xephos, would you mind if I took him off your hands?” He asks it with what sounds like genuine concern; his eyes speak volumes against his voice and bore into Xephos with an already made decision.

Xephos fusses with Rythian for a few more moments before Rythian feels the weight on his mind lessen and watches as Xephos’ eye glaze over.

Angels are also widely known for their “persuasive talents”.

“Nope.” Xephos makes the “p” in the word pop and then smiles. His answers come out too lively, too happily. “He’s all yours.”

He smiles at them both, and then nods as if to direct Rythian of the bed, before turning to chastise Lalna, who’s dozed off and is hanging limply off the side of the bed. Rythian catches the words “shove” and “thermometer” before he’s distracted by the hand on his arm. The angel’s prodding hasn’t ceased, but he’s lessened it to an almost gentle brush along the edges of his mind.

The angel waves off the two bodyguards with a smile and assures them that he’ll be just fine – he just wants to ask a couple questions, that’s all. Rythian doubts it, but he complies.

He’s led to an elevator while the angel’s eyes bore into his back. The touch on the edge of his head is delving deeper and Rythian works hard to put up as many mental blocks as possible between himself and the angel. They stand facing the steel doors as the speaker dings each time the elevator passes a floor. He can just make out the blurry reflection of the angel behind him. His brown eyes are narrow; his gaze is sceptical and questioning. 

In his reflection in the doors, Rythian can see the hazy outline of his wings. They’re dark brown in colour, and look like they’re stretched too thinly across the joints. The thin skin between each limb of his wings if slightly transparent, and the smooth skin at the top of each wing is finely dusted with sensitive hairs. There’s a small tear in the left wing from when he was a small child and had gotten in a fight with another fledgling.

Rythian hasn’t seen his wings in a very long time – he’d be lying if he said that he wasn’t just the tiniest bit enthralled with them.

The speaker dings one last time and then the doors slide open slowly. The hand on Rythian’s shoulder gives a harder-than-necessary squeeze and he moves again, walking forwards until he can lean against the wall to his left. The angel copies his stance and leans on the adjacent wall. His brown eyes never leave Rythian’s.

“You can call me Ridgedog.” The angel says. He waits for Rythian to respond. When Rythian doesn’t, Ridgedog presses forcefully through their mental-link. He already knows Rythian’s name, so why is he urging so much?

The elevator jerks upwards after Ridgedog leans over and presses the highest number on the wall – floor number thirty. Rythian has never liked elevators; they’ve always made him sick and light-headed. Someone once described it to him as flying; Rythian thinks it feels like he’s falling in reverse.

“Don’t be shy, Rythian. You can show yourself completely, I won’t judge.” Ridgedog says it casually, but Rythian knows that it’s an order. Rythian opens his mouth to give a snarky response, but he can’t find it in him to give one. Instead, he heaves a sigh and complies.

His eyes slip back into his head as he let down his barriers. He can feel his body relaxing as he gives up control and lets his true appearance slip through. His eyes feel sticky in their true colour, but Rythian can’t help but admit that they feel much more natural than those of his vessel. Ridgedog makes a noise that sounds like approval and Rythian watches as he lets his gaze travel over Rythian’s body. Regardless of their form, whether they be physically manifested or not, both demons and angels can see a demon’s wings. For anything else to see them, the demon in question must pull them through the veil and force them to manifest on the physical plane. 

Rythian realises with a start that it’s been about three months since he’s last seen his wings.

The elevator doors slide open with a ding once they reach the thirtieth floor. Beyond them is a generic hallway, centered by a vanity that might have once been beautiful, but has since become rundown and is now covered in a thick layer of dust. Ridgedog motions for Rythian to follow him and sends him a smile through the mirror. Rythian only stares back with wide, black eyes.

He makes a mental note to ignore mirrors from now on. Yes, he’s showered and generally clean, and although there’s a thick dusting of stubble along his jaw and neck, his human vessel looks fine, if not a little worse for wear, but that’s doesn’t matter. He can see through the face of his vessel now that he’s let down his guard, and he doesn’t like what’s staring back at him. Twisted, greying skin clings too tightly to his bones, his red-rimmed black eyes bulge from their sockets, and his teeth are yellowed and curved.

Rythian turns away, although he sneaks a couple more glances out of sick curiosity. He can see that Ridgedog is taking off his jacket, and Rythian decides that that’s a better distraction that picking at his cuticles.

Ridgedog is shimmying out of his jacket rather ungracefully. It catches on a bulge in his shirt and then falls to pool around his ankles. Rythian is eyeing the twitching bulge under Ridgedog’s shirt with open fascination. Ridgedog leaves his coat lying in his path as Rythian trails along, black eyes blinking in curiosity as he watches the white dress shirt get looser. He gasps audibly when he catches sight if the feathers that are poking out from a gap between Ridgedog’s dress shirt and trousers.

While demons are never in their true form on Earth - they’re always trapped in a human vessel - angels are their own creatures entirely. This grants them special privileges, such as living in their own bodies. Along with their wings, angels retain each attribute gifted to them – their looks, their abilities, and their voices. Each one of their attributes has been gifted to make them into something beautiful.

And while they are beautiful, they are also deadly. Angels, while known as messengers, are truly god’s most divine warriors. Soldiers of immeasurable strength, they are to be feared as well as loved.

The white shirt is quickly lost behind Ridgedog along with his coat. Rythian watches as Ridge casually slides a key card from his front pants pocket and then works it into the door’s lock. The door unlocks with an audible click; the angel pushes it open and then enters. He holds it open for Rythian and then waits for him to pick his way towards the threshold. Rythian passes Ridgedog and then moves to stand stiffly off to the side of the room.

Ridgedog’s room is, honestly, a disaster zone. Furniture has been upturned, clothes are strewn everywhere, and a laptop lays on the table, open – it sits on one of the only clear spots in the room: on the table pressed against the one wall made entirely of glass. Ridgedog doesn’t make a move to turn on the light, and Rythian doesn’t feel like being proactive at that exact moment.

Without the light, the room is dark almost pitch black. Rythian guesses that it’s sometime around midnight right now. The glass wall gives Rythian a good view of the carnage in the streets; if he squints, he can see the tiny silhouettes of people pacing around the perimeter that’s been set up around the hotel.

“Sit down, make yourself comfortable.” Ridgedog says. Rythian opts rather to lean against the nearest wall and to try and ignore the blinking words that flash across the laptop’s screen.

He’s instead paying attention to the thick, beige fabric that’s wrapped around Ridge’s torso. It’s a tiny scrap of fabric that surprisingly seems to hold its weight against Ridgedog’s wings, and Rythian guesses that it’s to keep Ridgedog’s wings secure against his back so they’re less noticeable. They bulge and press against the fabric with excited twitches, and once Ridgedog unclips the last safety-pin, they spring free and stretch out as widely as possible.

In the dark, they almost seem to glow. The white feathers are dark nearest his skin, almost beige, but they grow lighter near the tips. Amongst them, there is one lone gray feather that sticks out awkwardly against the other speckled white ones. A few are tangled, and Ridgedog sits down exhaustedly onto the one king-sized bed in the room and promptly begins carding his fingers through the tufts of down.

“So, what brought you here to the Yogtowers, Rythian?” Ridgedog doesn’t look up from his preening, but he expects an answer. Rythian pushes off the wall and walks, awkwardly, given the circumstances, to stand at the foot of the bed.

“Three strange men with stupid haircuts.” Rythian replies. Ridgedog laughs and then shakes a few feathers from his hand. One of them drifts over to the foot of the bed and Rythian plucks it from the duvet to examine it. It’s softer than he’d imagined – he’d imagined something stiff and paper-like, like a seagull’s feathers – definitely not something as downy as this.

“But why are you here?” He asks. “Why didn’t you just kill them and then go along with your life?”

“Because I heard the food’s to die for.” He answers the question with a sarcastic reply, but he tentatively raises the mental-blocks he’s set up to allow himself to push through every emotion he’s been feeling recently; all his pain, fear, anger and disgust floods their heads and Ridgedog goes still when it hits him. Rythian braces himself for the reply, but is only met with the soft brush of feathers. One of Ridgedog’s wings presses gently against his cheek in a comforting gesture, and despite their differences, Rythian feels a surge of gratitude swell in his chest.

“I felt the same way, you know.” Ridgedog finishes preening and tucks his wings in close to his body. He looks up at Rythian and smiles, his eyes now pupil-less, like Rythian’s, but instead of black, they are a milky-white. “That’s why I started this. The human race is such a fascinating species. My brothers don’t understand that; they think that the humans can be recreated after this war, and that they’ll be able to continue on like nothing ever happened.” `

“But they’re so wrong. It took this species thousands of years to evolve to this point. They earned the right to live on this planet – they invented pants, they discovered teas, made stupid romance stories, and most of all, they made mistakes. Their imagination and creativity is unparalleled by any other one of God’s creations, and my brothers want to kill them off because of some silly dispute.”

There’s a small pause, and then:

“Have you ever read Twilight?” Ridgedog asks suddenly.

“No.” Rythian shakes his head. They’re in the middle of the damned apocalypse, and Ridgedog wants to know if he’s ever read a teenage romance novel?

“Good, it sucks balls.”

Ridgedog seems to hum with energy, and Rythian assumes it’s from keeping himself hidden all the time. Ridgedog’s energy seeps out and filters into the air. The previously dark room seems to be alive with movement as wisps of Ridgedog’s grace swirl and dance around their heads like smoky fireflies.

“So, you ran away and started this?” Rythian watches as new emotions swell behind Ridgedog’s façade and he finds himself smiling. The feelings Ridgedog pushes through their mental-link mirror Rythian’s.

“Eeyup.” He smiles and Rythian feels every instinct inside of him swell and press against him with the urge to kill, but he just spreads his wings to ease the tension and smiles back.

Ridgedog grins and pats the comforter with one hand. Rythian takes the invitation and settles down on the bed. Ridgedog has to adjust when the mattress dips under the new weight, but he doesn’t complain.

Ridgedog leans back onto the bed and sprawls out, his feathery wings taking up more space than the bed can accommodate. The ends spill over the edges and trail over the ground with each slight movement. A single feather is caught in a wisp of grace, and Rythian plucks it out of the air to test it between his forefinger and thumb.

“By the way,” Ridgedog adds nonchalantly, without even looking up “If you tell anyone that I’m an angel, I will not hesitate to cut you.”

Rythian laughs and replies with, “Likewise.”

Those are the last words exchanged before they break out in hysterics. Neither of them knows why, but every time they try to calm down, the sight of the other red in the face and gasping for breath is enough to drag them back down. Their link is severed somewhere during their fit, and neither of them makes any attempt to re-establish it afterwards.

Rythian gets the hiccups a few minutes after he leaves.

\--------

Ridgedog escorts him as far as the elevators before receding back into the safety of his room. He explains that this floor, the floor reserved solely for the higher-ups, (which, Ridgedog explains, is him and one other person) has had all security cameras ripped out to ensure that no one gets a sneak-peak at Ridgedog’s wings. Rythian is offered a room on the same floor, but he declines the offer in favor of bunking with a man named Ravs.

He’d met up with Lalna, who was clutching the same silver flask in his hand, on his way down. Lalna, as it turned out, wasn’t as much of an asshole as Rythian had made him out to be, as long as he was drunk. He’d greeted Rythian with an awkward smile and had led him to his room once they’d gotten the key. The skin around both his eyes was quickly blossoming black. There was a piece of white tape across the bridge of his nose to keep it in place while it sets. Luckily for Rythian, he didn’t appear to be holding a grudge, as he took another swig of the foul smelling alcohol in his flask.

When they reach Rythian’s room, room 225, Lalna bursts out in laughter.

“Oh, man, you got fucked.” Lalna slurs. “You’re so fucked.”

“What are you talking about?” Rythian snaps, sliding his key card into the lock. The light on the handle flashes green, and then gives way when Rythian twists. The door unlocks with a click, but Rythian doesn’t open it immediately. Lalna’s laughter kicks up a notch as the blond man backs up to lean against the adjacent wall.

“I give you three seconds before you’re sprinting down the hallway screaming, with what you’re about to see.” Lalna says between laughs. His words are slurred, but Rythian manages to make out the gist.

“Oh really, and why’s that?” Rythian steps into the room, only to freeze halfway through the threshold.

Loud moans and screams echo throughout the room as the two people before him continue on with their activities, paying no attention to Rythian as he stands frozen in the doorway, one hand still on the doorknob. The smell of sex is fresh in their air, and Rythian regrets his decision to bunk with someone else immediately.

He spins on his heels and lets the door slam behind him with a satisfying bang. His eyes are huge, and his chest lurches as his stomach twists in on itself.

“That was way more than I’d ever wanted to see of anyone, ever.” Rythian breathes out. Lalna laughs so hard that he has to lean against the wall to support himself.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lalna gasps “It’s kind of a rite of passage – you have to see Ravs naked at least once before you’re a true Yognaught.”

“You said there’s a mess-hall?” Rythian speaks quickly and loudly, trying to forcefully start a new conversation. Lalna laughs a bit more, but allows them to leave the vicinity of Rythian’s new room. “How about we go and grab some breakfast, huh?”

Lalna raises his flask to his lips with a nod and leads Rythian down the hall. They enter the lobby again, but this time Rythian’s led down the hall to the left instead of the one directly adjacent the front entrance. Strippin is waltzing in with a shorter blond man under his arm. The blond is cradling a small, red-headed child in his arms, but the child pays him no mind as he stretches his chubby little fingers towards Strippin. He gropes the air for Strippin, who is too interested in the story he’s recounting to the blond man to pay attention to the child.

The little kid loses interest in Strippin once his eyes settle on Rythian. Piercingly blue, his eyes scan over Rythian and strip him bare; his face breaks out in an enormous grin as he struggles in the blond man’s grip to reach for the brunette.

“Martyn!” The little boy squeals. “Down! Down!”

Martyn makes a clicking noise with his tongue and turns the little boy around so the kid’s facing his shoulder. This only aggravates the kid even more, and he grabs tiny fistfuls of Martyn’s shaggy blond hair to show it. Martyn winces before Strippin takes the child out of his hands.

Strippin, however, doesn’t seem to like children any more than Rythian does, because he holds the child by its armpits and carries it with his arms outstretched towards Rythian. Rythian automatically moves to accept the boy, but soon finds himself in a curious predicament; the boy is all over him – on his shoulder, around his waist, in his hair – and is grabbing fistfuls of whatever he can reach to make his exploration easier. Chubby fingers wrap around two of Rythian’s own fingers and hold on tightly as the boy throws himself over Rythian’s shoulder.

“Sorry, sorry.” Martyn starts apologizing as he – unsuccessfully – tries to pry the boy from Rythian. None of them – not Strippin, Martyn or Rythian - seem to know how to handle the child.

Lalna intervenes after Martyn gets kicked in the face by the squirming toddler. The drunken man surprises everyone by scooping up the child effortlessly and distracting it as if it were second nature – Lalna holds him with his hands under the boy’s armpits and raises him high above their heads while making wide, excited expressions up at the toddler. Lalna smiles up and makes a few whirring noises while waving the kid around in slow circles. The redhead giggles uncontrollably all the while.

With one last loud noise, Lalna places the redheaded boy back in Martyn’s arms and then salutes with two fingers. The boy doesn’t stop giggling.

“Okay, say goodbye, John.” Martyn drawls tiredly.

“Bye-bye!” His chubby fingers work hard as the close tightly into a fist and then open repeatedly. The three of them head off towards the elevators, leaving Rythian and Lalna alone in the lobby.

“You handled that well.” Rythian comments. Lalna has a far off look in his eyes, but he answers with a simple shrug and another tilt of his head to drain the contents of his flask.

“I’ve had a lot of practice.” Lalna doesn’t continue, and Rythian doesn’t press. They continue on in silence until they near what used to be the hotel’s restaurant. The room in made up of four floor-to-ceiling glass walls and sits in the middle of a large, near empty room, save for a few benches and a help desk. The restaurant looks more like an exhibit at a zoo than a dining room, but Rythian doesn’t comment when he smells what’s for breakfast.

“Are those pancakes?” Rythian asks – no, demands to know the answer. Lalna smirks, although it’s a little crooked as Lalna’s pretty tipsy, and casts a sidelong glance towards Rythian.

“Yup.” He holds the glass door open for Rythian, who almost trips over himself upon entry. The sound of sizzling rings through the room, and Rythian swears he’s been sent to Heaven.

“How the hell did you guys manage to make pancakes?” Rythian demands. Lalna scrunches up his face before he replies – yeah, the lights in the dining room were bright, and in comparison to the warm, cozy mood-lighting of the lobby, they were blinding, not to mention if you’re drunk as a fish.

“Pancake mix doesn’t really have a shelf-life.” Lalna ushers Rythian around the bar. An old, faded sign that reads “employees only” sits on the counter, long since forgotten. “We’ve got some cows in the back, so we don’t really have to worry about that, either.”

“You’ve got cows?” Yup, Rythian’s in Heaven. He died back at the house and was bought directly up to Heaven, priority-shipping style.

“Yup.” Lalna shakily hands Rythian a plate, which Rythian accepts whole-heartedly. “I actually used to be a dairy farmer, so most of the livestock here is mine. I brought along a few chickens too.”

“So, do you guys have anything else?” Rythian asks, eyeing up his plate. The sight is one straight from Rythian’s dreams: a pile of scrambled eggs, some rice, and a pancake. He thinks he might actually start crying.

“Well, if you’d like, you could work in agriculture. We got our hands on a bunch of seeds and stuff, so we’ve got this nice little farm going in the back.” Lalna says. He’s glancing between his plate and Rythian during his whole explanation, and he’s clearly just as enthralled with his breakfast as Rythian is with his. “I help out there a bit, but I’m more of a science-y type guy, y’know?”

One of Lalna’s hands works to tear his pancake into bite-sized pieces so he can chew on them while they search for a table – it’s a task that really shouldn’t have been so hard, but Lalna looks as if he’s searching for someone.

Most of the tables in the dining room are empty – that’s probably because, if the clock on the wall is any indication, it’s about two o’clock in the morning. Despite this, Lalna chooses a table that’s already occupied. He slides in easily and throws his arm over the shoulders of the red-headed girl sitting on that side. Rythian pauses, but gives in to his hunger and awkwardly slides in beside the man opposite the red-headed girl. Lalna offers Rythian the salt shaker, which honestly scares the crap out of Rythian because he can practically feel the sting just from looking at it. He declines before it can get any closer and proceeds to dig in.

Thankfully, the silverware isn’t actually silver. Rythian disregards the knife completely, opting instead to just use the side of his fork to cut up his food. The red-headed girl sets down her coffee mug and captures Rythian’s attention. He keeps his eyes trained on her from under his eyelashes while eating.

“What happened to your face?” The girl’s examining Lalna’s face tenderly, and Rythian feels a wave of guilt wash over him. Lalna glares drunkenly, although he kind of goes cross-eyed after a few moments, over the table at Rythian, which prompts the girl to turn and give Rythian a once over.

“Who are you?” It isn’t a threat – she actually sounds genuinely curious. She’s even smiling at him, which is a sentiment that Rythian finds himself returning. He smirks at her, which makes her blush and hide behind her mug. She averts her eyes to take a gulp of what Rythian assumes is coffee. Rythian feels the smirk melt into a goofy smile that makes his eyes crinkle.

His face heats up when Lalna laughs and points his fork towards Rythian, crowing, “Someone’s got a crush,”

“I’m Rythian.” He glares over at Lalna and throws the fabric napkin that was sitting beside him at Lalna, who’s so tipsy he misses it completely and it gets hit in the face with it. The girl laughs at him, but the man next to Rythian stays still. One of his fingers taps irritably against the side of his mug.

Rythian glances over to find the man’s eyes – unnaturally green, like fresh grass – trained on him. Rythian flinches slightly when the man locks eyes with him. He doesn’t look away, not even after Rythian turns to face his food. He can practically feel the man’s eyes burning into the side of his head.

“I’m Zoeya.” He focuses his attention back on the girl. His ears are ringing, probably from the too-bright florescent lights above him. His wings stretch angrily behind him and press painfully against the plush back of the booth. It’s a bit awkward to fold them back in without shifting too obviously, but Rythian manages somehow. “This is Teep.”

Rythian steels himself and risks another glance towards the green-eyed man. Teep’s eyes are still trained on him. His hands are moving quickly in front of him; Rythian realises after a moment that he’s signing something.

“He says it’s nice to meet you.” Zoeya translates; his eyes tell a completely different story. Rythian watches, transfixed, as Teep’s hands spell out more sentences. “And he’s wondering where you’re from.”

Hell. “Seattle.” It’s not exactly a lie; Rythian picked up this vessel in Seattle.

“That’s cool.” Zoeya says. “I’ve always wanted to go to Seattle.”

“How about this, then?” Rythian leans forwards across the table and dramatically glances from side to side. “Once this whole apocalypse thing’s over, I’ll take you up there and show you around.”

Lalna guffaws through his mouthful of pancakes. Zoeya smiles coyly back at him and replies with an, “I’ll hold you to that.”

“I hope you do.” Rythian smirks back at her, only to get his napkin thrown back into his face by Lalna.

“Your food’s getting cold there, Romeo.”

“I already broke your nose today; don’t make me break something else.” Rythian warns, but he starts eating anyway. He fights with his rice, which keeps falling off his fork every time he tries to scoop it up. Zoeya snickers at him, but hands him a teaspoon anyway. He accepts it with a grin. Teep’s fingers tap a faster rhythm against his mug.

Rythian’s head spontaneously starts throbbing, sending shockwaves of pain down his jaw and neck. Rythian tries to ignore it in favor of his conversation with Zoeya.

“What room are you staying in?”

“Room 225.” Zoeya laughs like he’s just told her the funniest joke in the world, and Rythian thinks to himself that he might actually enjoy hearing her laugh again.

“That’s gotta suck.” Zoeya sympathizes. “If you’d like, I have an extra bed in my room. As long as you don’t mind me being up at two every morning, it’s a pretty sweet deal.”

“Really?” The throb persists, louder now. Teep’s sitting ramrod straight and is signing something to Zoeya. From the look on her face, he’s trying to convince her not to invite strangers back to her room at the crack of dawn. She signs something back, which makes him relax slightly.

“Yeah, it’s kind of lonely up there, anyway.” Teep crosses his arms in defeat and slouches in his seat, pouting like a two-year old. His eyes fix on Rythian again, now laced with a look that suggests he’ll beat Rythian to death if he tries anything.

The throbbing is as loud as a siren now.

“I don’t like this” rings through Rythian’s head so suddenly that Rythian drops his fork and jumps. “I don’t trust you.”

Rythian prods around the room and finds nothing out of the ordinary; everyone feels humanly warm and squishy.

“Who is this?” Rythian fires back. He’s met with silence. “What don’t you like?”

No one replies.

Teep pokes Rythian, who jumps again, prompting Lalna to make some joke about Rythian resembling a Chihuahua, much to Rythian’s chagrin. Teep is pointing to the ground on the opposite side of Rythian.

“Oh, you want to get out?” Teep nods, pointing again towards the outside. Rythian nods and awkwardly shuffles down the sticky bench until he can stand to make room for the man. Lalna stands, wobbles a bit, and then helps Zoeya to her feet. She tips her head back and finishes her coffee in one long swallow. Lalna accepts her cup when offered, and then balances it atop his plate. He reaches for Rythian’s nearly-empty plate as well, but Rythian stops him and picks it up himself. Lalna directs him to the counter where they got the plates in the first place. Someone behind the counter scowls and accepts their plates before stalking off further into the kitchen.

Rythian’s surprised to find Zoeya and Teep still waiting for him. They both look up from their conversation when Lalna and Rythian approach, Zoeya with a smile and Teep with his skeptical glare.

“Ready?” Zoeya’s surprisingly chipper for someone who’s up at three o’clock in the morning. 

“Sure.” Zoeya offers Rythian her hand, which Rythian accepts without thought. Teep grabs hold of her other hand, and Lalna, who is looking a little better now that he’s got some food in his stomach alongside whatever concoction of alcohol he’d been drinking grabs Rythian’s hand with an overly-dramatic shriek of, “Hold me, I’m scared!”

Zoeya smiles and waggles her eyebrows dramatically. “Alons-y!”

Rythian swears she mutters, “I’ve always wanted to say that,” under her breath before dragging them all off to the elevators.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said I'd get this up by Wednesday and look at that.  
> It's Monday.
> 
> Anyway, thank you to Katie for Beta-ing this for me. Having never watched and of Ridge's videos or streams, this was incredibly hard to write.


	4. October 10th, 2013

“I had a dream last night.” Rythian says from his place on Ridgedog’s bed. He lays splayed out on his back with his head hanging off the edge, lost in thought. Over the arch of Ridge’s wings, Rythian can just make out the slight shift of Ridgedog’s body towards his, which Rythian takes as his cue to continue. Gently, Ridgedog probes at Rythian’s mind, silently egging him on.

“Everything was in flames.” He continues, “I couldn’t tell if I was here, or somewhere else, but it was complete chaos.”

“Do you think it has any significant meaning?” The gap between Ridge’s two front teeth makes the “s” in “significant” whistle. “Can you- Are you psychic?”

Few demons, as is the same with angels, gain the ability to see the future. Only those of the highest ranks, mainly other fallen angels, known as Hell’s Soldiers, are granted this ability. All archangels have the ability to foresee events, although certain limitations apply.

“No.” Rythian starts. “Not really, I mean.” The blood-rush that Rythian is getting from lying on his back is making him dizzy, so he flips himself over onto his stomach. His wings stretch gratefully, sending slight ripples down his spine. His second jaw twitches, opening and widening, releasing pent-up tension in his head. To anyone who could see Rythian’s true-form, the image must look grotesque - a translucent jaw, grayish in colour, stretching out of Rythian’s face, dotted with sharp, pointed teeth? Disgusting.

Once it settles back into place, Rythian continues.

Ridgedog turns to give Rythian his full attention. Whatever he’d been trying to do on his computer, he was obviously having little success. “Not really?”

Rythian heaves a sigh and sits up on his heels. Explaining himself to Ridgedog will be difficult, but probably entirely necessary, if Rythian is going to get anywhere. The Yogtowers are not a permanent solution for Rythian’s problems, but the little slice of peace and quiet that they bring with them are enough to make Rythian want to forfeit his search for Paradise.

If Ridgedog knows about Rythian’s true motives, it will make it easier for Rythian to leave when he has to.

“Have you ever heard of The Foretelling of Decanus?”

——-

Rythian’s first week at The Yogtowers was a week to be remembered (and hopefully, forgotten, after Rythian found out where Lalna kept all his booze).

Apparently, your first week at The Tower was serious business. After your first day or so, which is spent recuperating from whatever horrors you’ve seen, (or in Rythian’s case, spent lounging around until six p.m. with a gorgeous woman and her mute friend that you kind of hate to love) you’re expected to find a job. Despite Rythian’s little heart-to-heart (which was admittedly a lot more awkward than the movies make it out to be, spilling your entire life’s story), Ridgedog still insists that Rythian make himself useful around the Tower until he’s told otherwise.

Rythian’s first instinct was to work in surveillance outside at the gate. His connection with both demons and angels alike would give him an upper hand on spotting any potential threats before they attacked. But, surveillance also came with the expectation of knowing how to shoot a gun larger than the pistol that Rythian was used to. Within the first five minutes of practice, Rythian’s shoulder ached from the force of the guns’ recoil, and he was having little success with the target.

Ridgedog promised that he’d try to pull a few strings, but the head of “The Ring” (which was the name given to the walls of defence laid out in front of the hotel), the man Rythian had met earlier, Strippin, didn’t take too kindly to strangers without exemplary abilities. Ridgedog promised him that, within a week, he’d be working in the outer ring, but during that time period, he’d be expected to find another job to busy himself with.

Zoeya had immediately offered him a spot upstairs in the tech department. Their current job was huge; Zoeya, being the mastermind she was, was working with a small group of programmers to try and create an internet of sorts. According to Zoeya, it would make communications a lot easier, and more efficient.

But, what with Rythian literally not having been among the living for about fifty or so human years, his knowledge of things such as coding and, may god have mercy, science in general, his choices were soon limited to chef, messenger, babysitter, or caretaker of livestock.

None of these choices suited him very well.

———-

“Do your tattoos have any significant meaning?” Zoeya asked him one night. After just two days together, the two of them had become inseparable. And with Ravs being the promiscuous person he is, Rythian had soon become an unofficial third guest in the Blackrock suite. He now slept on the floor at the foot of the bed in Zoeya and Teep’s room, under an extra comforter he’d scrounged up from who knows where. The room was a tiny little room, with one window that overlooked the remains of the city, and a closet-sized bathroom. According to Zoeya, they had sent out a group of people to fix up the pipe system so they would have running water as well as electricity, but after a bit of snooping, Rythian came to the conclusion that their never-ending hot water and infallible electricity had little to do with engineers and plumbers, and more to do with the angel upstairs.

“No, not really.” Rythian replied. He knew what was on his back – two large, purple eyes, centered by slit pupils, feline almost, and a small star at the base of his spine – but the meaning was lost when he’d taken over his host. All he remembered was a name, Joakim Hellstrand, and that he’d been born somewhere in Sweden. Poor bastard had been drunk off his ass when Rythian had risen up and claimed him.

He lay face down in his cocoon of blankets, buried in a worn copy ofSlaughterhouse Five, wearing only a pair of sweats that had been issued to him, as well as some awkwardly fitting mismatched shirts, a couple pairs of socks, jeans, and a pair of boots that were too-tight in the toe. Rythian had made a mental note to pester Ridgedog to get his wardrobe department to actually try next time.

Zoeya reached over and brushed her fingers over the marks, unaware of the way Rythian melted on the inside at her closeness. Her hair fell in her face, endearingly so, when she tilted her head to examine the inking across his shoulder blades. It seemed like she could find hidden meanings in everything, even mindless tattoos.

“Beautiful.”

——

Child-minding was a complete disaster. The children, as it seemed, loved Rythian. Rythian, on the other hand, couldn’t handle being within five-miles of the munchkins before having a panic attack and then subsequently locking himself in another room.

Rythian, the man who could face down demons, hellhounds, angels and even assholes like Lalna without breaking a sweat, couldn’t handle children for more than five minutes.

He’d spent most of the day tagging along behind the caretaker, Martyn, and his associate Toby, and had somehow dodged most of the work he’d been assigned by distracting the children and the adults alike. Behind the adult’s backs, he’d distract the children with mindless “magic” tricks; he brought the shadows alive; he snapped his fingers and summoned multi-coloured flames; he did everything in his power to keep the children occupied, so long as it meant that they’d stop climbing all over him like he was some sort of personal jungle-gym.

When Martyn and Toby were looking, Rythian would hold the children away from his body, grimacing. It seemed like every time Rythian stopped playing around, the children would grow bored and restless, leaving him back at Square One.

Martyn, like some sort of superhero, seemed to have mastered the ability to soothe even the worst tantrums. Toby dragged along behind him, picking up discarded toys, sometimes stopping to chat with a child here or there, discussing the weather, or maybe what they’d be having for snack that day. They were the perfect team, especially at that one point where Martyn was literally so tired that he just sat down in one those stupid metal fold-out chairs and passed out, leaving Toby the perfect opening to get to work on a masterpiece involving Martyn’s face and a couple of fluorescent sharpies.

As much as Rythian hated child-minding, he had to admit, drawing dicks all up Martyn’s stomach (where the children couldn’t see them, of course) did have its perks.

———-

“You have a PHD?” Rythian was flabbergasted; Ravs, his eccentric, seemingly always drunk, deadbeat roommate, whom Rythian hadn’t spent more than twenty minutes with in the whole five days he’d been at The Yogtowers because of his insane libido, had a fucking PHD?

“Yeah.” Ravs sat with his back resting on the headboard of his bed, surrounded by notebooks filled with what could only be described as insane scribbles. “I went to medical school when I was younger. I hated it, but what can I say, it had it’s perks.”

“So you…” Rythian plucked one of the notebooks off the comforter at random, eyes flitting over the words without actually picking anything out. “You actually do something around here?”

Ravs fixed Rythian with a pointed look. “I’m the head of the pharmaceutical department here.”

“So you handle the drugs.”

“Yes, I handle the drugs.” Ravs rolled his eyes, although his lips wore the ghost of a smile. “Where have you been the past couple of days? I haven’t seen you around.”

“Okay, changing the subject I see.” Rythian settled down on the farthest bed and tried not to imagine what it had endured. “Since someone here has been using this room for questionable purposes, I’ve had to share a room with someone else.”

Ravs gave him a look that screamed suggestions that Rythian would rather not think about, prompting Rythian to quickly add, “But we didn’t sleep together!”

Ravs settled back into his bed and huffed out a laugh. “Boring.”

Rythian hoped Ravs didn’t think the pillow Rythian later chucked at his head was boring, too.

——-

After day six, Rythian is no longer allowed in the kitchen area under anycircumstances.

——

He’s not allowed near the chickens, either.

——

When Rythian is turned down from his last resort, which is a small job patching up wounds no worse than burns or scrapes in the clinic upstairs, Lalna somehow appears outside the clinic doors, bottle of whiskey in hand. Xephos is seeing Rythian out, promising him that, if they ever need an extra set of hands, he’ll tell Ridgedog himself, when he catches sight of the bottle of Jack Daniels and his face just falls. Dejectedly, Xephos turns away and re-enters room 324, a tiny little single-sized suite that’s been remodelled to suit the doctors’ needs.

Lalna almost looks regretful, although his eyes are shrouded in a thick film of drunkenness.

“You seem like you need a drink.” Lalna offers Rythian the bottle, which Rythian accepts wordlessly. His wings flare at the burning trail the alcohol leaves in his throat, but his brain excitedly awaits the buzz.

“Thanks.” Lalna shrugs and tilts his head back for another swig. In the awkward yellow lighting, Lalna looks pale and washed out, and the fading bruises Rythian left behind are suddenly back in full view.

“Sorry,” Rythian starts, “about your face.”

Lalna smirks at him, “Don’t worry, I get that alot.”

“Asshole.” Rythian makes another pass for the bottle, which Lalna pulls away, shielding it with his body.

“Nope, no more for you.”

Xephos chooses that moment to poke his head into the hallway and hisses, “If you two don’t find a less public place to drink, I will personally re-acquaint you with that bottle, over both your heads.” He’s about to slink back into the room, when he fixes Rythian with a stare that makes Rythian’s blood run both hot and cold at the same time. “Twice. Each.”

The door slams shut behind Xephos, and both Rythian and Lalna scramble for the stairwell.

——

Ridgedog comes to him before Rythian can try his hand in the Engineering Department (with a killer hangover, to boot) and offers him another job: scavenging the city and its limits for supplies.

Rythian jumps at the offer, completely ignoring (and almost knocking over) the scrap machinery on the table in front of him.

Ridgedog fills him in on the mission, explaining that he’ll head out for a few days with Sips and Sjin, the two men that brought Rythian here in the first place, and will help them scope out supermarkets, hospitals and houses for things that may come in handy. Apparently, their goal is the military supply store in the town fifteen miles out of the city’s limits. Anything else is a bonus.

Rythian accepts the offer, and then is given two hours to pack whatever things he’ll need.

In the privacy of their own heads, Ridgedog confides in Rythian that, if he so much as lays a finger on either Sips or Sjin, despite how much they may be asking for it, Ridgedog will find Rythian, no matter where he is, Earth or Hell, and will smite his ass so hard that there’ll be nothing left of him but a pile of ash.

Rythian responds with a quick glint of black, curling his lip in a snarl, and lets his second set of teeth grate together. His shoulders tense, and for only his and Ridgedog’s eyes, his wings unfurl out of spite.

Ridgedog’s coat flutters in the draft-less room, and then he’s leaving in a swirl of browns, blues and gold.

In Rythian’s head, that annoying voice that had spoken to him during that first morning with Teep and Zoeya speaks again, “I’ll keep her safe.”

 

Rythian finds himself with two hours to kill, and he spends each moment upstairs, watching Teep flip through a well-worn copy of The Green Mile, and listens to Zoeya’s snores until it’s time for him to leave.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took too long than I'd care to admit. For that, I am sorry.


	5. October 20th, 2013

All around him, smoke stifles the room. It swirls up around him in thick clouds of blacks and greys, leaving him alone.

All alone.

Someone’s voice calls out to him, Sjin’s maybe, but his feet seem rooted to the quickly disintegrating floorboards. Both his hands grasp and grope blindly at the fog, but with little outcome. Tears well up in his eyes, blurring his vision.

“Rythian,” A new voice, one much lower-pitched than either Sips or Sjin’s, speaks calmly through the haze. But each second is becoming more and more fragmented and disoriented, leaving Rythian stumbling in the dark. His heartbeat pounds in his ears; at the same time, everything is too silent.

“Wake up, Rythian.”

A pair of black eyes stares Rythian down, until finally, he collapses in a heap, only to startle awake in a rickety jeep, left with nothing but a hint of a dream, and a heavy sense of impending doom.

\----

“I think he’d be more the Pink Ranger type.” Sjin muses, stroking his beard in a ridiculously cliché fashion.

“I could see that.” Sips agrees, casting a glance towards the rear-view mirror. In the reflection, he can just make out Rythian’s form huddled against the window. The brunet turns to glare in reply, which earns him a low chuckle.

“I guess that makes you the dog, Jackass.” Rythian winces as the music reaches its climax, a screeching guitar solo, and fills the car with an obnoxious squeal.

“Ooh!” Sips leers. Sjin just continues smiling, chest puffed in mock pride.

“Rise and shine, Sweet Pea.” Sjin shoots back. “We thought you’d died.

“No,” Rythian grumbles while running a hand through hid disheveled mess of hair. “It’s impossible to sleep back there.”

“Don’t I know that.” Sips says. He feigns nonchalance, but a quick brush against the barrier of his mind suggests a deeper, darker meaning to his words. Beside him, Sjin purses his lips and focuses his eyes on the road ahead of them.

Rythian takes the lull in conversation as a chance to reach over and grab his bag from the back of their Jeep and to pull out a fresh shirt. He’s been stewing in his current shirt for two days now, and he’s sure that he smells pretty rank by now.

His old shirt is haphazardly thrown in the back, and then replaced with an ill-fitting grey Henley. It hangs off his shoulders like a sheet, revealing the sharp points of his collarbones and the pale, mother-pearl scar across his shoulder. There’s a sharp hiss as he presses down on the nozzle of the spray-on deodorant, and then the car’s filled with a thick cloud of chemical scents.

“There’s a town about ten miles from here. That’s where we’re going. There’s supposed to be this huge military supply story, and we’re hoping to find something salvageable there.” Sjin narrates, even though both Rythian and Sips know this. His fingers drum against the dashboard restlessly, and he keeps casting shifty glances towards Sips, whose steely gaze has yet to leave the road in front of him.

Rythian coughs to try to clear the tension a bit, and when that fails, he decides to just turn over again and try to get some rest.

The last thing he catches sight of is a sign, spray-painted over with the words, “Welcome to Paradise.”

\----

The military supply store turns out to be quite a disappointment: the only things left in the ransacked building are a couple of dehydrated food packets, a box of protein bars, and a few flashlights. At one point, it probably housed a group of survivors, since Rythian, Sips and Sjin all have to wade through waist-deep piles of refuse and dirty laundry. Rythian neglects to mention when his foot hits something soft and pliable, and when he feels the certain snap of bone underfoot.

Sjin leads the way, while Sips hangs back to pack up the jeep with whatever they’ve gathered so far. Rythian can sense Sjin’s discomfort, but Rythian makes sure to keep his mind’s eye settled on Sips, just in case. His wings flex uncertainly, but he manages to keep his shift under control.

“I don’t think there’s anything else in here for us.” Sjin’s voice rings with anxiety. Rythian weighs the options, but the padlocked door at the end of the room is too tempting an offer for Rythian to pass up.

“You go on ahead,” He continues forwards, sidestepping the occasional dismembered limb on the way. “I’m just gonna try to open this door.”

“Are you sure?” Sjin’s whole body exudes discomfort; he wants to be in two places at once, a feat Rythian could probably (technically) complete in his sleep, but instead of boasting, Rythian just waves a dismissive hand and ushers Sjin towards the exit.

The ridiculously-bearded man leaves.

As soon as Rythian hears the door behind him snick shut, he allows the tension in his back to ease up. His wings unfurl behind him, shifting a few pieces of trash on the floor in their haste, and his eyes slip back into his head, leaving only black, empty pits.

Even from his spot, fifteen feet away, Rythian easily tears the padlock from the chain that’s been secured around the doors. With the flick of his wrist, he crushes the lock, and peels the hinges off the wall, allowing the thick steel door to come crashing down at his feet. Dust swirls in the breeze the door swept up in its fall, but Rythian pays it no mind as he steps through the threshold, into the supply room.

The room is musty, smelling faintly of mold and rot, but besides that, it’s been unaffected by the recent conditions.

He roots around for a while, killing time to allow his body some recovery before he has to bottle up himself for another few weeks. On the shelves, he finds an amazing assortment of supplies: canned goods, ammunition, clothing and other necessities like first-aid kits that will greatly improve (or at least aid) some lives back at the Tower.

Feeling quite smug with himself, Rythian gathers up as much supplies as he can carry in his (surprisingly small) drawstring bag, and then slings it over his shoulder and continues on his way.

His eyes snap back, human once again (cue dramatic groan, Rythian thinks), just as the sunlight hits his face when he exits the building. Sips and Sjin both look equally un-amused with how Rythian waltzes over, but neither of them comments when he opens up his bag to show them his findings.

“How did you open that door?” Sjin’s face contorts into some over-the-top expression of what can only be described as utter confusion, which only makes Rythian’s smile broaden, with only the reply of wiggling fingers, and, “Magic”.

Instead of replying, Sips just rolls his eyes and closes the backdoor of the Jeep. Rythian opens his mouth to make another sly comment, but he’s interrupted before the words even leave his lips.

“Good afternoon, boys.” A woman’s voice, thick with a western drawl, greets them. Her words are punctuated by the defined cock of a shotgun, and Rythian doesn’t need to turn around to know that it’s pointed at them. “’S a nice lookin’ car you’ve got there.”

There’s more noise as more people join her on the abandoned road. Boots scuff loudly on the road, grating shards of glass and gravel into the pavement. Slowly, Rythian turns around with his arms raised, cautious, but also angry beyond belief.

“Good afternoon, Ma’am.” Rythian smiles charmingly, and is met with a sarcastic sneer from the woman. She’s somewhere around the age of fifty, Rythian assumes, and is beginning to show signs of aging in the gray hairs creeping around her hairline, and the crow’s-feet and laugh lines that freckle her face.

“You gonna step away an’ let us take it, or are we gonna have to take it from ya’?”

Sips makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat and takes a step closer to the car. One of the men behind the woman cocks his gun and smiles, daring Rythian to make a move.

As subtly as possible, Rythian allows his eyes to slip back, just for a second, and sneers. As soon as the man flinches, Rythian blinks and disguises himself.

“Sorry,” Sjin shakes his head and reaches around to pull the gun out from the waistband of his jeans. “But you’re gonna have to keep walking.”

“Pity.” The wrinkles around the woman’s face deepen when she smiles. It doesn’t reach her eyes, which are cold, and dead-set on the well-stocked car.

The group behind her breaks off ad swarms Rythian, Sips and Sjin. A girl in a tattered plaid shirt and torn bell-bottom jeans tackles Sjin, clawing with her too-long fingernails at his face, while two other men prepare to take a swing at his body with a pair of baseball bats.

A smaller man, thin, gangly and overall under-fed, tries to get his arms around Rythian. Rythian, out of instinct, wraps one arm around the boy’s throat and braces both hands on either side of his head. The boy struggles in his grasp and manages to thrust a small, serrated-edge pocket knife into Rythian’s side.

Rythian reacts without thinking, and twists the boy’s head violently to the side. The sound of a metal baseball-bat hitting human flesh and bone rings in his ears; as does the sickening crunch of the boy’s spine snapping as his head twists to the side like a bottle cap.

Dully, in the back of Rythian’s mind, he registers the second person behind him still. Before he can be attacked again, Rythian drops the boy, who crumples at his feet like a discarded toy, and snarls. The noise is thick, ugly, and purely demonic. The man behind him, an old, frail looking man with loose, hanging skin, trembles when he catches sight of Rythian, standing above the crumpled child, with what looks like a shovel clutched tightly in his fists.

Rythian’s chest swells, and sparks flicker in front of his eyes as he imagines the thousands of possible outcomes. Fire; he could conjure up a storm powerful enough to upturn the entire forest that sits beyond the highway they’re standing on; he could snap his neck.

Or he could let them go, and accept defeat. He can still hear Sjin’s coughs – these people would stop at nothing, but they weren't killers, since they’d left Sjin breathing. And yet, Rythian had killed that boy, who still lies not a foot from where Rythian hovers.

But something in his mind is still screaming for blood. Something dark and unsettling rattles around in his head like loose change; it bangs on his temples, pulls at his throat and squeezes his chest with an iron grip.

Numbly, he weighs the two options he has, all while slowly sinking to his knees. His hands find the gravel and dig into it, gathering loose handfuls of the sharp, dusty stones. His eyes slide shut, and his breathing falters. Something inside of him roars, and begs to be let out like a child locked in its room.

His second set of teeth gnash together in his head, and the dust on the ground in unsettled when his wings sweep over the ground, arching up, up, up behind him, and then again when they curve downwards.

He’s contemplating sending out a brain-wave and pulverizing everyone’s brains to jelly, when the metal head of the shovel comes crashing down on his head, and the world tumbles into darkness.

\----

Sips is substantially more upset by the loss of their car than either Sjin or Rythian. He growls explicit threats to the wind as they walk back down the freeway in search of someplace to rest. The sun is quickly setting behind them, and each of them, still weary and bruised (Sjin had stopped coughing up blood an hour or so ago, but his sides are still dressed up in an array of purples, browns, blues and yellows) worries about what the night might bring.

“We should have stayed in the warehouse.” Sjin groans, again, for the umpteenth time that afternoon. Rythian, whose wounds are healing miraculously fast (thanks to a lesser beating, he explains, when in reality, it’s just because he’s not as human as Sips and Sjin), supports Sjin with his shoulder.

“We couldn’t have stayed there. The door was shot to shit when we got there; it wouldn’t have offered any protection.” Sips grunts, shoving his hands further into the pockets of his white-and-blue sweatshirt. Rythian huffs out a sigh and tries to ignore the way his breath swirls in front of his nose.

“There’s a house down there.” Rythian jerks his head towards the ditch that follows the side of the freeway. At the edge of the forest, a small shack of a house in slowly being consumed by the wildlife. Tree limbs have wrapped around the front, as have vines, and the grass around the stone walkway looks about knee-high.

“Have fun getting me down there.” Sjin half-groans, half-laughs, before adding, “You’ll have to roll me down that hill.”

“Only if you want me to.” Rythian deadpans, which earns him a shifty-eyed pout. Sips grunts his agreement, and then starts towards the metal bars that separate the road from the drop-off. Rythian’s reminded of even Sips’ humanity, when the stoic-faced man winces and then rests with one leg over the bar. He swings his other leg over, and then slowly makes his way down the slope.

Rythian follows with Sjin in tow, practically carrying him over the fence and then down the hill, until they’re all standing at the door of the house. Sips starts backing up, preparing to kick down the door, when Rythian shoots his hand out to stop him. Sips looks up, mouth set in a thin line, until Rythian reaches down to twist the doorknob, and the door swings open. Sjin scoffs from between them and pushes away from Rythian to amble into the house.

The lights don’t work, but there’s running wagter and a propane stove, so none of them complain. There’s a fireplace against the left wall, surrounded by two dusty velvet ouches and a fluffy shag carpet. While Sjin just throws himself onto one of the couches, Rythian throws a couple of logs into the fireplace while Sips roots through the cupboards in search of supplies.

In the end, they manage to get a fire started, and find a couple of cans of peaches, a box of stale saltines, and a box of cheerios.

Sips and Sjin both tuck into a can of peaches, taking turns passing the can back and forth to stab the fruits with their forks. Rythian opts to take a handful of cheerios and to crunch on them thoughtfully. Now that they’re all sitting around, Rythian can make out all of Sips and Sjin’s wounds.

Sips is alright, although both of his eyes are looking deep-set and black, and there’s dried blood in the corner of his mouth and on his knuckles. One of his legs is sporting a long, nasty looking gash that’s probably going to get infected if they don’t treat it properly, and his breathing’s slightly laboured, as if he’d in immense pain.

If he is, he’s very good at hiding it.

But Sjin isn’t alright – in fact, he’s looking worse than some of the souls Rythian has seen in Hell. The entire left side of his face is swollen and purple, with an angry red gash where the skin split running all the way from his eyebrow to his chin. His lip is split, one of his fingers is bent awkwardly and swelling quickly, and underneath his shirt, he looks like someone had let a kid play with magic markers along his sides. A plethora of colours run down his sides, and each of his ribs has been outlined by the bruises.

At that moment, Sjin doubles over and coughs, long and hard, until he’s left looking worn-out and on the brink of death.

“Okay, you need to sleep.” Sips slams the can of peaches down onto the rug, then tucks Sjin into the dusty sofa-cushions. Sjin allows himself to be coddled, and when Sips stands up to leave, Sjin reaches out and tugs Sips back down onto the couch. Sips makes an uncomfortably choked noise, but otherwise, he remains put.

Rythian shuffles off, muttering something about, “Stupid repressed feeling” and then tucks himself into the opposite sofa, with nothing but the dry taste of stale cheerios to keep the monsters away.

\----

When he wakes up, Sips is missing, the shower is running in the back room, and Sjin is still snoring.

Rythian carefully slides off of the couch and tests his range of motion; everything appears to be working just fine, and there’s only a sting and pull in his back to remind him of the shovel that he’d taken to the back of the head. The cut on his side is healing well, and his breathing appears to have returned to normal.

He waits a couple of seconds, listening to the sounds of the shower, and then pads over to where Sjin is lying on the couch, sprawled out yet stiff.

He’s looking no better than he was last night – worse, even – and this settles the dilemma that Rythian had been contemplating. He just hopes that Sips doesn’t come out of the bathroom anytime soon.

He quickly gathers a few items: matches, a piece of silverware from the drawer, and a glass of water. He carefully sets up the matches in a makeshift star pattern on the dusty floorboards, then draws a circle around the star. Just the sight of the pentagram fills his chest with hope, which he quickly shoves down, replacing it with a cold, heavy weight. He places one hand on Sjin’s head, with his middle finger settled in the middle of his forehead.

With one last pause to make sure the shower’s still running, Rythian dips a finger into the water, and then begins to speak.

Strings of syllables, not of any particular language, but of something purer, like pure life essence, or light, drip from his mouth. They’re repeated on the air by a deeper voice, one that can’t be found by any mortal man, and then become tangible. Wisps of purple rise from his mouth like smoke; they snake down his arms and down his back. It crawls across him like a swarm of bugs, and then across Sjin’s skin, too. Rythian dips his fingers into the water again, and his fingers leave a black residue swirling in the water.

The smoke grows thicker, curling around Sjin’s back and down his legs like vines on a wall. Sjin’s mouth is open, and from it, more purple smoke is pouring out. Tears run down Sjin’s cheeks, yet he remains sleeping. His side gives a massive jerk, as one o his ribs it forced back into place. His right hand spasms; his eyelids flutter open, but he continues staring up blankly at the ceiling.

When Rythian dips his fingers into the glass again, it’s as black and thick as oil.

The bruises on Sjin’s face are just beginning to fade, when the shower turns off. Rythian’s chants die in his throat, and the smoke dissipates at once. Sjin’s body relaxes, while Rythian’s stills. He quickly swipes a hand out, destroying the pentagram, and then he snatches up the glass and dumps it down the sink.

The water, now as thick and yogurt, sits like a lump in the sink and doesn’t move.

Rythian feigns washing his hands when Sips comes shuffling in, dressed in the same white-and-blue pull-over and torn jeans. His hair is still dripping.

“You’ll catch a cold if you go out with wet hair.” Rythian chides. Sips snorts and moves to pick up the discarded box of cereal on the floor, only to stop dead in his tracks. From his place on the couch, Sjin stirs a little, kicking off the blankets in the process. Sips’ eyes trace across Sjin’s side, which is now mostly blemish free and no longer looking as concave. He looks up to give Rythian a look that can’t be described, and then leans down to nudge Sjin until he wakes up.

“Whassit?” Sjin slurs. There’s a short pause, before he sits up startlingly quick. His hands fly to his sides, then to his face, as he pokes and prods in search of wounds. He gives slight winces every so often, but besides that, he’s fine.

“Holy shit.” Sjin whispers. Rythian makes an attempt to hide his smile by taking a sip from the glass in his hand, which is still stained black, and –

Oh shit.


	6. October 21st, 2013

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Urgh! I forgot to mention this last chapter, but there's fan-art, too! Thanks to the lovely Cabbagecatch and Strawfingers, you can find their works   
> over[ here, ](http://25.media.tumblr.com/8849da50d66ac8c3dd64363bb3af463f/tumblr_mrwcovCrIY1snlq04o1_500.jpg)[ here, ](http://25.media.tumblr.com/21c86dcdcd8a7543a04d92c2d6bc15bf/tumblr_mrxahjAJFX1snlq04o1_500.jpg)[and here!](http://25.media.tumblr.com/21c86dcdcd8a7543a04d92c2d6bc15bf/tumblr_mrxahjAJFX1snlq04o1_500.jpg)

Low in his chest, something begins to unwind.

Rythian had known that using his magic would be dangerous; if he hadn’t already given away his position by opening the pentagram, he’d surely have broadcasted his rank by healing Sjin.

After the initial shock of waking up looking as if he’d nothing had happened, Sjin and Sips had begun asking questions – dangerous questions. Rythian calmly denied any accusations, brushing them off with a fake look of surprise and a couple of shrugs. Neither Sjin nor Sips seemed to believe that he’d noticed nothing while Sips was in the shower, but there wasn’t much room for disbelief in their situation.

Rythian, to try and deter their questions, had quickly slid away and hopped into the bathroom. Sips had opened his mouth to protest, mentioning something about not having enough time, but Rythian quickly cut him off with the door. Before Sips could come stomping into the bathroom, Rythian shucked off his shirt and slacks, turned the spray on full-blast, then stepped under.

The paint on the bottom of the bathtub was peeling, revealing flaky spots of rust. At Rythian’s feet, the water is quickly turning a black. Rivulets of the discoloured water run down Rythian’s chest and legs, as well as some unidentifiable ooze. He pauses to consider what it may be - the water he'd used to purify had turned black, but it hadn't seemed as thick as this. No, this seemed too thick, almost like...

No, that was impossible.

Rythian decides to his musings in favour of the bar of soap on the tub’s edge. He quickly scrubs it over his chest, face and head, then opts to just drop it on the water stained bathtub floor. He runs his fingers through his hair, drags them over his chest, and then scratches at his knees where gravel and dirt are still stuck to him.

When he stands back up, the ooze is still running down his face. He turns off the water, shakes himself off, and then checks himself in the mirror above the sink.

All’s fine - he’s still a scrawny brunet (with a little more stubble than he remembered)– except for the thin trickle of black that’s seeping from his nose.

He shrugs it off as a side-effect of the healing he’d done earlier - he has to if he wants to stay sane today - and shoves a wad of toilet paper into his nose. His shirt and pants stick to his skin as he tries to weasel himself into them, but he somehow manages, and then he’s flying out of the door, yelling some sort of obscenity about how Sips’ mother resembles a baboon.

Sips just throws a handful of cheerios at him, and Rythian assumes he’s been let off the hook.

\---=

Once they finish eating, Sips, Sjin and Rythian all sit down to devise a plan. They all agree that finding a car should be their first priority – it’s something that they shouldn’t have much trouble with, what with being right off of the highway – but then they’re also faced with finding some sort of fuel.

Sjin mentions seeing a gas station about five miles away, on their way to the supply store, and soon Rythian, Sips and Sjin all find themselves trekking down the highway. The sky above them is overcast, and the air is crackling with humidity, signalling a heavy rainfall to come.

Every car they pass is dead – either the engine’s been ripped out, or there’s not enough gas in the tank to get it moving. At first, it had just seemed like bad luck, but after trying at least ten different cars, it seems almost premeditated.

The sick feeling in Rythian’s stomach intensifies at around the four mile mark, and then just keeps growing. By the time they reach the gas station, he’s gasping for breath. Sjin immediately guesses that Rythian has suffered more than they’d thought after being attacked the day before, but Rythian assures him that he’s fine.

The second Sjin turns his back, Rythian scrambles away and throws up thick clots of black, gluey sludge.

Whatever is scratching against his chest calms down after that, but in the back of his head, something warm tickles the outskirts of his mind.

\---=

The only car they find that’s even in relatively nice condition is a 73’ Pontiac that groans to life after three tries at hot-wiring it. The engine sputters, and the tailpipe is spitting out thick, sickly-sweet fumes, but once the gas tank’s full, it purrs like a happy lap-cat.

Sips leaves them alone for a moment while he runs out to check the pharmacy across the street for anything that might be of use. Sjin jokingly calls out and asks him to, “ask if they have any licorice,” to which Sips offers his middle finger and then disappears behind the door.

“He lived out of that Jeep, y’know.” Sjin says non-committedly. Rythian opens his mouth to reply. But stops, mid-breath.

“Literally?” He asks instead. Caution creeps into his tone.

“Literally.” Sjin continues on, stroking his beard like some sort of cartoon character. “He used to be the CEO of a major artificial-grass company. They were one of the largest competitors to AstroTurf. But he accidentally made a bad investment; ended up losing the company about eight-million dollars. His father was the bag-bad boss, and he fired Sips on the spot. Froze him out of all his bank-accounts, then left him living on the streets.”

“About five months before all of this happened, I met him in a Laundromat. He was living off of the kindness of strangers and by cheating at card games. I was a firm believer in chasing my dreams, and my dream was to go out and explore the world. He and I just sort of clicked, so I asked him to chaperone me. I’d saved up enough to get both of us halfway around the world, and then- well, you know the rest.”

Sjin looked at Rythian with such an open, friendly smile, that Rythian suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to throw-up again.

Guilt, thick like mud but cold as ice, seemed to seep into his throat and chest.

“That sucks, man.” was all that he could choke out. Sjin smiled, eyes crinkling slightly at the sides, and then he turned back towards the car, stroking it fondly. Rythian watched him for a moment and tried to imagine him, all six-feet-two of him, squashed into the backseat of the Jeep with Sips in the front – or maybe even sprawled over Sjin in the backseat – and suddenly felt bad for not fighting to protect the car.

He could have killed each of those rebels, but he hadn’t.

Something evil inside his head sneered that he was growing weak.

Something warm was sneering that, also.

\---=

After another five or so hours in the car, the engine stalls, and then a thick plumage of smoke begins to seep from under the hood. There’s a low grinding noises, like metal snapping, and then the car jerks to a stop. The air conditioner is spewing out a foul smell akin to gasoline, and all three men spill out of the car, gasping for air.

Sips makes an extremely vulgar motion towards the sky while Sjin rounds the car to pop the hood. The scent of burnt oil and smoke hits him like the soft blow of a cat’s paw – a very disgusting smelling cat – and he’s coughing all over again. Sips swings his hands down from above his head and flips off Sjin, too.

As if the heavens are retaliating towards Sips’ gestures, rain begins to fall soon after. Sips and Sjin both groan in frightening sync – Rythian pulls his shirt collar up high, so that if he presses his chin against his chest, the collar sits on his nose.

“The engine’s shot to shit.” Sjin declares. The rain falls faster now, almost like a solid sheet of water. “We’re going to have to find a place to stay for the night.”

Rythian agrees with a (slightly ridiculous) groan of encouragement, and then cranks his head to his left, towards a long forgotten rest-stop. His shirt just barely hangs on, but he manages to keep it up.

Sips makes one more gesture towards the clouds while sprinting towards shelter – he’s given a loud clap of thunder in return.

All three of them sprint faster. The door creaks open easily, surprisingly unlocked, and there’s food stacked in a neat pile by the front desk.

All the while, something hot burns through Rythian’s mind.

\---=

They find a pile of moldy smelling blankets in the back room, and then they set up camp amongst the ransacked shelves. Rythian offers to take first watch, but only Sjin manages to fall asleep.

“I was really surprised when Sjin was so badly beaten, the other day.” Sips mumbles. He’s sitting with his back against one of the shelves, cross-legged, with a frayed-edged blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders. “I’m always the one getting hurt. I’d always thought that I’d be the first to die, but after last night…”

He looks up at Rythian, as if he expects Rythian to continue the sentence. Rythian stares him down, before slowly lifting the plastic fork in his hand. There’s a half-slice of pear on it, and he bites into it before he’s expected to say anything.

“I guess I just hope I’ll be the first to go.” Sips finishes distractedly. Rythian has no idea how to reply to that. They both sit in silence, until finally Sips tugs the blanket up to his chin and curls up, like an awkward cat, and falls asleep.

Rythian contemplates Sips and Sjin where they’re curled up on the tiles for a moment. Sips looks substantially younger while he’s asleep, whereas Sjin looks just as ridiculous as he normally does awake; the blanket around his torso has bunched up between his legs, and a thin line of spit drips from his open mouth.

Rythian carefully sets down the can of pears, holding his fork in between his lips with trailing his tongue contemplatively against the prongs as he tugs the blanket back over Sjin.

Before returning to his pears, Rythian snaps his fingers, and clutches a small flame to his chest between his palms.

\---=

“Sips?” Rythian jerks awake. The room is as silent as the dead, and Sips is nowhere to be found. Beside him, Sjin stirs, but he doesn’t awaken. Rythian quickly runs the back of his hand over his chin to swipe away any spit that may have dribbled down his chin.

His hand comes back smeared with black, and dread pools in his stomach.

“Sips?” Rythian awkwardly wraps himself in his blanket, trying to find comfort in its rustic, moldy scent.

When he reaches out with his mind, he can only find one heat register – Sjin.

“Sips!” Rythian calls out, fully rousing Sjin this time. While Sjin blearily tries to make sense of the situation, Rythian scrambles to search the shop.

The room around him shows obvious signs of struggle; tables have been upturned, shelves tipped over, and the blanket Sips had been so wrapped up in is scattered around the room in blood-soaked shreds. There’s a slight smear of red on the floor, which then tapers off into an unsteady pattern of red drips.

“Rythian?” Sjin shuffles up behind him, sounding much like a lost child. He rubs his eyes like a toddler who’s been woken up by a nightmare and wants to sleep with his parents.

Too bad Sjin’s just stumbled into an even worse case-scenario.

Sjin stops dead beside Rythian. Rythian just makes out the short, broken noise that Sjin utters before Sjin collapses into a heap on the floor.

Because standing in front of them, hung only by the nails through his hands, claves and stomach, is Sips, against a shaky star-in-circle pattern, drawn in blood. The weight of his body is dragging him down, forcing his back to arch against the wall – just as Rythian assumes Sips’ position can’t get any worse, his head lolls forwards on his shoulders and falls against his chest. There’s a sickening squelch sound as more pressure is applied to the nails in Sips’ body, followed by another steady thrum of blood that leaks down the floor in thick rivulets.

Sjin turns his back on Rythian and Sips and promptly loses his lunch. His hunched form shudders and quakes under the pressure, but his body does not cease its terrorizing. Even after his stomach’s empty, Sjin continues his dry heaving.

The heat in Rythian’s head flickers, followed by a lilting drawl:

“Hello, Rythian.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so updates will be either really, really quick now (since I've finally passed the filler-hill, and am now just headed towards the eye of the shitstorm) or really, really late, since I'm now going to start up my firt original fiction endeavour. I dunno, but my English teacher's been discussing being published in the future, and writing my first novel and letting him read it, so...
> 
> Yeah! Thanks to both Phoenix and Sheep for beta-reading this!


	7. October 22nd, 2013

Rythian could remember fire. He could remember his arms, hung from a large plank of wood as if he were crucified. All around him were familiar faces, each and every one of them twisted in anger; in fear.

He could remember his brother, Joshua, coming forwards with a lit torch in hand. His eyes burned with an intense hatred that struck Rythian as ironic. He’d done all of it for his brother, he’d sacrificed countless people, ravaged nearby villages, and even sold his own soul, all for his brother. All of it was to heal him from his illness.

Yet he repaid Rythian with death.

“Have you any last words?”  _Of course_  he had last words. He wanted to confess to his brother, to tell him that he’d done all of it, every single sacrifice, was for him. For Joshua, his poor, sickly brother, whose blue eyes always seemed dull and whose breath smelled like death.

“Pray for me, Joshua.” Rythian pleaded. His soul was lost, but perhaps his brother’s prayers would be felt, even in Hell. “My intentions were good.”

Nothing changed. His brother, dressed in his best slacks and shirt, crouched down with his torch in hand, and quickly pressed it against the straw base of Rythian’s crucifix. It took little time for the flame to start, and once it had, it raged, uncontrollable.

Rythian could remember how the flames seemed to swallow everything, until all he could hear was the shrill song of screams – his screams – and the crackle of the fire. He could remember how his blood seemed to thicken, and then ran black. His family, his friends, they all stared on as he burned and burned and  _burned_.

And then he wasn’t burning anymore. But he was. The flames were invisible now, licking at his insides and gnawing on his skin. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel them.

Instead of on a stake, he was in a cell behind iron bars. The walls were short and much too close for his liking. They sizzled when he touched them, damp for whatever reason, and his hands were still burning. His skin was still burning.

He was still burning, and it never stopped.

—-=

The voice came from a thin, well-dressed man. His smile was not genuine, but it gave his features a strange softness. His tired, aged face seemed almost… kind.

Rythian recognized him instantly. He was Azazel, and last Rythian had seen, he’d been one of Lucifer’s go-to guys when the apocalypse had started. His tracking abilities were unmatched by any other.

Azazel sold his soul, and promptly died after being thrown in a well. He came into Hell looking like a drowned cat, always dripping wet, leaving puddles of murky water in his wake. He’d been barely seventeen years old, and his young, fit body glowed with youth, even in Hell. He may have been beautiful at one point, but Hell changed him. His features warped, his fit muscles becoming taut, poised for the purpose of murder. His tanned skin grew gray.

Water still dripped off of him, even today.

Azazel walked at a leisurely pace, taking in his surroundings. He smiled at Rythian, extending his arms as if they were old friends.

Sjin whimpered.

“Rythian, look how you’ve grown!” He drawled, taking in Rythian’s vessel. His eyes lingered on the scar that peeked out across his collarbone, still pink and freshly healed. They took in his haggard appearance, his overgrown stubble and thick, curly hair. Azazel judged the vessel fairly, giving a slight nod in appreciation.

The acknowledgement made Rythian’s skin crawl.

Rythian tore away at Azazel’s disguise, wasting no time on the petty suit he wore, until he found his true form underneath. While Sjin saw an elderly man, well-dressed but pathetic in size, Rythian saw black. He saw thin grey skin stretched across sharp bones; he saw black eyes that regarded Rythian with such malice that his skin, burning from Azazel’s proximity, seemed to run cold.

Rythian didn’t respond. His cover was already blown; he could feel Sjin’s glare on the back of his head, but for some reason, he wanted to continue his charade. He liked being Rythian the Human.

Azazel tilted his head, and the rain outside pounded down even more relentlessly.

Water versus Fire. What an ironic turn of events.

—-=

Rythian was the first of many. Rythian sold his soul to become a witch, just like all his fellow recruits. Most of them came through Hell’s gate with the same story on their tongue: someone came to them, in the form of a cat (or bird, or toad, or hag, the list droned on) and told them great tales. Tales of power and richness, of never feeling hungry again. At the time, most people were starving and sick, so the idea of being healthy and prosperous for life was a great deal.

Very few had sold their soul without the help of a messenger. Rythian was an anomaly in a sea of oddities.

Even worse, very few were burned at the stake. Just the sight of those who had been burned struck fear into Rythian; he couldn’t imagine what he must have looked like.

In Hell, you looked however you did when you’d died. There were people who came in with their faces bludgeoned beyond recognition, and others who looked no different. Deaths ranged from sickness to slit throats, and while not every one of them was identifiable, your death still hung over you - it loomed in your wake like an ever persistent cloud.

Death by fire was one of the worst.

Completely skeletal, the charred remnants of your skin hung off of you in strips. Red flesh was exposed, and whatever muscle was left worked stiffly to move your body. Most couldn’t talk, because their lungs were too ragged, or their jaws didn’t work.

Rythian couldn’t do much of anything besides watch. What remained of his tongue was attached flimsily to his jaw by a few strands of tissue, and inside his ribcage, nothing remained but a single disfigured lung. His words were nothing but teeth gnashing together, and an noise he mustered was merely a whistle of wind through his teeth.

 His eyes, luckily for him, were almost completely unharmed. The only difference was the slight yellowness around his right side.

He was told that he would represent fire. He understood why: he could feel it in his bones, singing through what little tissue he had left. His gnarled hands, bones with a thin layer of burnt skin and loose tendons, singed whatever he touched. Pain was an endless reminder or what he’d done for his brother.

Perhaps that was what set him apart from the others: he was the first, as well as the only one whose intentions were completely selfless. Witchcraft was not a selfless act, it seemed, and most of his comrades had sold themselves for much less than a fellow life: money, extravagant foods, or simply power.

But none of their pasts mattered now. They’d all ended up in exactly the same place, and there was no changing that fact.

There was no changing the fact that every day, Rythian burned.

—-=

Azazel smirked. His lips formed words that Rythian didn’t hear, and Sjin stood up slowly. He turned his back on Sips, who hung from the wall like a forgotten marionette.

“Rythian.” Azazel had the temperament of a child. He was growing bored with Rythian’s silence, with his refusal to play along. He wanted a game. He wanted some fun.

But when Azazel played games, he played dirty. “Christo.” The word was spoken slowly, drawn out in a lilt. It tapered off into another trademark smirk as water pooled at Azazel’s feet, pouring from his eyes, from his jagged, twisted mouth.

Rythian exploded.

—-=

Rythian excelled in his studies. He mastered his element within a year. Then he mastered Water, as well as Air.

Rythian was chosen to be an alchemist. There were three others: Raatora, Rebecca and Henrie.

Raatora was beautiful. Her thick black hair hung over her shoulders like silk, draped in tantalizing ways over her bare shoulders. She wore nothing but a thin skirt and a scrap of animal skin across her breasts, showing off a wide expanse of dark, unblemished skin. Along her arms, she wore tattoos representing her heritage proudly. Her throat was slashed, and sometimes when she spoke, blood trickled from the gash.

Henrie was horrid. Unlike Raatora, who had been killed quickly, his death had been slow. He’d been stoned to death. His skin was imprinted with bruises, which were dark blue and purple against his milky skin. One of his eyes bulged out of its socket, and his jaw jut out at an awkward angle.

Rythian never saw Rebecca. She, unlike all three of them, had no corporeal body to possess in Hell. She’d burned and burned and burned, until nothing was left but a scatter of ash. She followed the breeze like a ghost, flitting between protruding bones and scattered limbs.

Rebecca was the best of the four of them, so Rythian killed her.

—-=

His jaws snapped together, grinding together until one of his teeth chipped. A horrible taste rose in his mouth, and when he spat to be rid of it, a thick black sludge worked its way up _._  His wings flared, casting long shadows across Sips’ body, which still hung from the wall uselessly.

His skin burned,  _burned_ like the fire that was trapped in his veins.

His stolen blood  _sang_. He could hear Sjin’s gasp, and it did nothing but tug on his soul, pulled on the taut wire until it sang in a higher note. He was an instrument too tightly tuned, and now he’d snapped and it was all going to Hell.

One of the shelves erupted into flames. His eyes did, too.

Azazel was smug, too smug. Rythian wanted to hurt him, wanted to tear him open until he bled and bled and bled and would he still be smiling then? Rythian hoped he would be, just so he could rub that smug face in its own blood.

Rythian was on fire and he loved it. He screamed, the noise like wind through tree branches. His bones ground together, and he was sure his body, his stolen body, was tearing apart at the seams, revealing a shrivelled black husk, burnt beyond recognition.

Sjin is lost in Rythian’s thoughts, drowned out by the need to kill. The need to tear Azazel apart. Because of that one word, his control is lost. That one word, the name of God, that brings out all the sin, all the death, everything dark and evil inside of him, and then shoves it towards the surface.

For the first time since his release, Rythian breathes in, and it burns like all of Hell is running through his system.

—-=

Rythian slaughters Rebecca by using her own element against her. He plucks each and every particle of her being out of the air and burns it. He listens to the wind she’s carried on and feels it wither and die. When he laughs, it’s maniacal and sounds only like bones grating against each other, along with the sick squelching of flesh against flesh.

He kills Henrie by tearing out his heart. He digs his sharp, bony fingers in Henrie’s sunken little chest and tears out the man’s heart, still beating, before Henrie’s eyes. He devours it and Henrie dies with a spell on his lips, his shattered face lying awestruck in the dirt.

Raatora is a warrior and she fights back, but even she is no match for the berserk energy that runs through Rythian. He loses a finger, as well as his tongue. He slaughters her viciously, scratching away at her skin until it peels from her bones just as his does. Her lovely features are marred, disguised by blood. He follows the tattoos on her arms until they’re singed and she smells like burning flesh.

He wants the world to burn, so he burns everyone in sight. He massacres dozens of souls, kills tens of demons, until he’s faced with the Devil himself. His skeletal face grins at the Devil, who glares down at him with unmasked fury.

Rythian completes a prophecy that night. The blood he bathes in soaks into him and fills his muscles and bones with sin. He becomes an embodiment of madness, and his curved fingers become claws; his dull human teeth become fangs, as long and sharp as steak knives.

Rythian starts the apocalypse, and he releases Hell itself.

—-=

They fight like animals. Rythian digs his teeth into the flesh of Azazel’s arm just as Azazel’s fingers find his arm. They dig into the skin and  _tear_.

He wants to scratch, so he does. He digs his stubby human fingers into Azazel and he tears, he tears, he pulls until the skin under his fingers breaks. Azazel snarls, drives his knee into Rythian’s stomach. Rythian retaliates by shoving his palm into Azazel’s face, pushing him away futilely. Azazel screams; so does Rythian.

Sjin is moving around, swearing, crying, but Rythian can’t think about him right now, he doesn’t want to think about him right now, because the blood that’s soaked into his skin, that’s stained his past like a tattoo is screaming at him to kill, to devour.

Azazel drags his nails down Rythian’s face just as Rythian digs his own into Azazel’s stomach. His fingers grasp at the skin there, digging into the vessel’s flesh. Azazel smiles mockingly, blood bubbling at his lips, and shoves Rythian to the ground.

“While you were gone, I had a bit of work done.” He saunters over to Rythian and presses his knees into Rythian’s thighs. “I’m not just a demon anymore, Pretty Boy.” He sneers, his breath hot on Rythian’s face.

“I’m a god-damned Soldier of Hell now, you son of a bitch. Have fun trying to kill me with those ratty old claws of yours.” He picks up one of Rythian’s hands and examines it. “Look at these, so soft and clumsy.”

He snaps three of Rythian’s fingers, making sure to keep the demon pinned securely under his weight, and then Sjin puts a bullet through his head. Azazel lurches slightly with the impact, and the hole in his forehead is grotesque, all peeling flesh surrounding a single shining bullet. Sjin shoots him again, this time in the shoulder.

Azazel doesn’t flinch; his glare settles on Sjin. Sjin, the easy target.

Sjin, the man whose second half was just brutally murdered and then laid in a sacrificial sigil for him to find.

Azazel advances and Sjin puts another three bullets in him. When the gun runs out, he chucks it and dives.

He screams at Rythian, tells him to, “just fucking do something.”

So Rythian does.

He screams as loudly as possible and then sets the whole fucking building on fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah! Thanks to both Phoenix and Sheep for beta-reading this!  
> Also, there is at least one more update before I go back on hiatus (I have two weeks off and then it's finals week, so I'll be too busy crying) There may be updates even after break ends, but those may be few and far in-between.


	8. October 23rd, 2013

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so glad to get the series back on its feet! It will be finished by the end of the Summer!

To be entirely fucking honest, Sjin isn’t even surprised anymore.

 

Okay, sure, he hadn’t pegged Rythian as a demon – Sjin knew he was shady, but he didn’t know he was a monster – but he’d had an idea of just who he could trust and who he couldn’t

 

But Sips’ death… it did something to him. It was almost like a switch had flipped is Sjin’s head, and now instead of seeing the whole picture, he was seeing snippets. He could see Sips laughing because Taylor Swift had just come on the radio and they both knew all the lyrics.

 

And then he was whisked away to their first encounter with a demon. He wasn't staring at Sips’ body, but at the twisted sneer of Harriet, the little old lady who ran the only bakery in Lonely Hollow, Connecticut. The entire town had burst into hysteria when the town’s mayor, Richard Heath, ripped off the arm of the treasurer. And then Harriet stood up, with black eyes, and screamed until it seemed like her vocal chords had shredded. In a matter of seconds, the town meeting dissolved into a frantic swarm of mothers and old men trying to flee.

 

Sjin could hear someone approaching, someone with a slow, melodious voice - the kind of voice you’d listen to for hours on cassette. Instinct made Sjin step back, and his foot slipped in something wet. He can’t look down because he’s remembering how Sips taught Sjin how to cut firewood.

 

Sjin could see his first day at the Yogtowers when Zoeya had offered to teach him how to make a “proper” omelette (spray can cheese, canned tomatoes and an entire clove of garlic). It was disgusting; he loved it.

 

And then he was suddenly in real life again. He was in a rundown convenience store whose windows were shattered and walls were painted with blood. Sjin stepped in it, and his next few steps left red smears on the floor.

 

For a few seconds, Sjin couldn’t tell the difference between Azazel and Rythian. They were both snarling, contorted versions of themselves, as if they were under the pull of some sort of animalistic urge. Rythian was screaming a high-pitched, rusty screech. Every once in a while, he would gnash his teeth together. Azazel bared his teeth and growled.

 

Azazel snarled something and Rythian bit him. Azazel tore a chunk of skin right off of Rythian’s arm and Rythian reciprocated. Watching them, it took everything inside of Sjin not to just sprint towards the door and start spewing curses at the sky.

 

He could remember reaching for his gun, but not flicking off the safety or raising it. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. He remembered basic training and he knew that putting a bullet between Azazel’s eyes would kill him for good.

 

He raised his gun, aimed, and fired. The bullet hit its target, the impact rocking through Azazel's body. Under his breath, Sjin counted under his breath. It took three seconds to expel a demon after death.

 

Three seconds passed.

 

He couldn’t remember anything after that. The air seemed to fill with the sound of children screaming, tires on asphalt, and then the whole building somehow spontaneously combusted.

 

So yeah, Sjin may not have been exact, but he wasn’t surprised.

 

\----=

 

Right after Rythian sets the building on fire, Azazel gets the message and evacuates his vessel. Which was totally unfair, because Rythian was still raging, practically frothing at the mouth, but Azazel didn’t seem to care.

 

Rythian had seen many exorcisms in his lifetime, but watching Azazel hit the emergency escape button was by far the most infuriating.

 

Azazel – literally Azazel – dripped out of his vessel’s body in the form of a black sludge, just like the kind that Rythian had been losing. It dripped out of his nose, ran down his cheeks like tears, and then finally, after the body crumpled to the floor, erupted from his mouth. Azazel’s vessel jerked violently, shuddering under the duress of Azazel's escape. Azazel’s head split open on the floor. His body gave one last shuddering cough, spewing sludge down his chest, and then he laid still.

 

The goo dissolved, hissing against the water-slick floor, and then began to evaporate. By the time it was gone, Rythian was beginning to feel the heat of the flames.

 

Rythian was still breathing heavily. He was bleeding, and his eyes stung. He wanted to go home.

 

He leapt when a hand grasped his pant leg, nearly kicking Sjin in the face.

 

Sjin's face didn't betray him. All Rythian could decipher was his pain, which Rythian didn't really want to see, anyway.

 

He pulled Sjin’s arm around his shoulder, picked a point outside of the convenience store, and teleported.

 

\---=

 

They sat with their backs to the car, watching as the fire roared and the building collapsed. Sjin didn’t say anything to Rythian, and Rythian didn’t press him to.

 

It stopped raining when Azazel left, evidently because he was its cause. The road is still wet, though, leaving both of them shivering and soaked through.

 

They find a working car by the time the sun rises over the mountains to the west, and it’s only when Rythian slides into the front seat that Sjin finally breaks his silence.

 

“I don’t want you coming back home with me.” His hands were wrapped around the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles had gone white. He refused to meet Rythian's eyes, focusing on a far-off point in the distance.

 

“That’s stupid.” Rythian scoffs. His shirt is soaked through with blood, but he’s healing. He leans forwards and clicks the glove box open, hoping for some sort of pain killer, but Sjin slams it shut before he has the chance to rifle through it.

 

“How did you even get past our border? It’s protected against demons!” Sjin was on the verge of hysterics now. He was watching the previous day’s events play out in front of him, and Sips’ corpse hanging from the wall wouldn’t leave his mind.

 

“Salt. You’re missing salt.” Rythian sighs. “The herbs you’ve got set up are decent, but if I were to apply enough force like say, driving over it, I could easily make it across.”

 

Sjin presses his foot down on the gas pedal until it’s as far as it will go, but he doesn’t move his foot from the brake, either. The car groans under the pressure. “I’m going to ask you politely, Rythian. Get out of the car.”

 

“That wasn’t very nice.” They’re bickering now. They’re bickering in the middle of a deserted road which had been strategically cleared so that all three of them would be led to their deaths. The car they're fighting in was probably hot-wired and filled with gas just to get them there. “I didn’t hear a please.”

 

Sjin’s fist connects with Rythian’s face before he can blink. Blood spurts from his nose and runs down Rythian’s face, staining the front of his already ragged shirt. His eyes turn black, but Sjin doesn’t shrink. His face is twisted in fury, no longer comical but dangerous.

 

Sjin’s eyes aren’t hopeful anymore; his glare is piercing and it bores holes into Rythian.

 

Rythian stumbles out of the car with barely enough time to slam the door before Sjin is screeching down the road. His car leaves a thick plume of smoke behind it as it tears down the road.

 

Rythian has lived centuries alone, but he can’t remember it ever feeling this badly.

 

He watches the car disappear on the road around a bend. Even after Sjin disappears in his little El Camino rip-off type car, Rythian follows his heat trail until he’s out of range.

 

He sits down on the street and waits for the sun to rise.

 

\---=

 

He lies there feeling useless for a long time.

 

He sweeps his hand over his nose, wincing when his hand connects with the still-tender flesh, and then wipes it on his shirt.

 

He stands up, stretches out a cramp in his back, and then slowly starts making his way down the road. It’s littered with debris; the wildlife has already started to overstep its boundaries and is creeping out onto the asphalt, spreading out their thin, straggling roots. A rabbit hops out of view when Rythian passes.

 

His wings stretch behind him, rigid and tense. He wants to punch Sjin in the face.

 

Actually, he wants to punch his brother in the face, but he’s a few centuries too late for that now, so he settles for Sjin instead.

 

It isn’t long before the sun begins to dip again. The sky seems to darken with each step, which worries Rythian. He’s currently in the middle of what he believes to be a freeway, which is flanked on both sides by fields and fields of, almost literally, nothing. He can see horses and cows passing freely through the fields, and at one point he encounters a flock of sheep that seemed to have claimed the road as their domain.

 

He spends what seems like an eternity trying to maneuver his way through the throng of sheep, finally giving up and just walking along the side of the road in one of the deep trenches, which leaves his shoes and pants soaked with filth.

 

Long story short, Rythian hates sheep now.

 

Once the moon rises fully, he decides that his best bet is to try teleporting as far as possible to try and find a place to rest. But with only miles and miles of empty road in front of him, his line-of-sight teleportation soon becomes useless, as well as draining. After only a few miles worth of zapping in-and-out of place, he’s left nauseated ad incapable of doing much other than ambling along.

 

He picks up heat signals along the way, too. Some are close enough for him to feel vulnerable, but others are far off, barely registering in his head. He tries to cut down on how far he’s stretching himself and focuses on a closer, more confined area around him.

 

After a while, he gets so tired that he forgets about it entirely.

 

After an even longer while, his insolence rears its ugly in the form of a man walking towards him from the west.

 

“You look like you could use some help.” The man calls. He wears a broad smile, and his small brown eyes squint back at Rythian from behind his glasses. His face is boyish, bearing feminine qualities, but his lanky body is obviously male. He’s wearing a leather jacket and a ball-cap embroidered with the words, “Sacramento Kings”.

 

“You come here to finish me off, Paimon?” Rythian spits. It leaves a red-ish black stain on the ground, which makes Rythian wince.

 

“Surprisingly, no.” Paimon smiles still. Rythian scans the king, searching for a weapon but finding none. Not that it mattered much: Paimon was one of Lucifer’s lieutenants – little to nothing could stop him, other than an archangel. “Azazel’s on a rampage right now. He’s not happy with how you treated his body.”

 

Paimon reaches towards Rythian, who flinches so violently that Paimon pulls his hand back. “What do you want from me?” Rythian hisses.

 

“I’m here to talk, Rythian.” Paimon tilts his head and smiles. The edges of his mouth are lined with sores; if he doesn’t take over another body soon, he’ll end up a Creeper. “We want you to come home.”

 

“I am home.” Rythian says simply. He shoves his hands into his pant pockets. “I was human once. This is home for me.”

 

“That’s not true, Rythian.” Paimon coos. His eyes glitter like stars. Rythian sighs and peels back his disguise to stare at his true form. Paimon’s large, owlish eyes and thin face stare back at Rythian. “If you came back with me, you could rule Hell.”

 

“No.” Rythian moves to walk away, but Paimon’s hand darts out to stop him. His lips press into a thin line. He tugs Rythian closer so they’re nose to nose.

 

“You listen here you charred freak.” Paimon growls. His wings spread out behind him, massive, towering above both of them. Bits of feather and fur still cling to them; he was an angel once. “Whatever you did, it wasn’t permanent. You can get out and back in, but once you go back, you never get out again.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Rythian shoved Paimon away, but the higher-ranking demon grabbed a fistful of Rythian’s shirt and yanked him forwards harshly. Paimon bared his teeth.

 

“Once you go back to Hell, there’s no way back out. Evacuating’s a one-way ticket back home.” One of the sores lining Paimon’s mouth split, leaking black ooze down his chin. “You have to go back, Rythian. You go back down and you open those gates again. Let us pass freely.”

 

“The portal is temporary?”

 

“For now, yes. We can get back in but not out.” Paimon shoved Rythian away and swiped his vessel’s hand over his chin. “Fix the problem.”

 

“We’re fighting for the same cause, Rythian.” Paimon gestured to the rash that was creeping up Rythian’s neck. “If you don’t help me, you’ll face the wrath of the Devil underground.”

 

“We-“ Rythian was cut off by the sound of a car horn. Both demons’ heads whipped around towards the source of the sound.

 

A forest-green Rav 4 came to a screeching halt in front of them. The two men behind the wheel wore matching look of horror.

 

“Drive, Dean!” The brunette hollers. The man beside him fumbles a bit with the gear shift and slams his foot onto the gas pedal. The Rav flies down the road in reverse.

 

Paimon sneers, clearly unamused. Rythian reaches out to stop him; Paimon steps back and screeches, the sound like unoiled hinges, like fingernails on a chalkboard, and the ground splits in two down the center of the road. Both men in the car scream as the car skids and crashes into an abandoned vehicle.

 

“Paimon, stop!” Rythian yells. Paimon whips around and hits Rythian squarely across the jaw with an outstretched hand. Rythian recoils and then growls. Paimon cracks his neck and spread his wings even wider. The air crackles with energy.

 

Rythian lunges forwards. Paimon grabs a fistful of Rythian’s hair and twists his neck around Paimon’s teeth graze Rythian’s throat in warning. Rythian scrabbles for purchase on Paimon’s vessel. His fingers dig into Paimon’s leather jacket; he can’t tear through it easily.

 

A gunshot rings through the air, followed by another. One of the bullets his Rythian’s leg; he howls in pain but, miraculously, stays upright. Paimon is hit twice in the back and flinches slightly. Rythian takes the opening and smacks his hand over Paimon’s ear, deafening him. Paimon stumbles; another gunshot rings and grazes Paimon’s temple.

 

Paimon, seemingly annoyed with the two men, pivots and snarls at them. The brunet glares at Paimon over his shotgun.

 

Rythian takes the chance and grabs the back of Paimon’s neck. There’s a huge sore there, which explodes when Rythian touches it. Rythian wraps his other hand around Paimon’s throat and throws all of his weight against Paimon, sending them both crashing to the ground. Rythian scrambles to sit on Paimon’s chest.

 

Paimon’s pointed, bird-like features stare up at Rythian.

 

Rythian digs his fingers into Paimon’s neck and smashes the demon’s head into the pavement.

 

He does it over and over and over until Paimon’s body lurches, his spine bowing as his vessel evacuates the contents of its stomach. Black seeps from Paimon’s mouth, from his nose and ears and from the gaping hole in the back of his head.

 

Eventually the sludge evaporates.

 

Rythian looks up at the two men and blinks away the black in his eyes. He awkwardly wipes his hands off on his jeans and smiles at them. Fred cocks his gun.

 

“My name’s Rythian.” He says. The blond, Dean, looks at him with a horrified expression. “Would you mind giving me a ride back into the city?”

 

The brunet points his gun at Rythian. Rythian stands up slowly with his hands raised.

 

“How about I put a bullet through your skull?” The brunet sneers. Dean raises his hand to shush his companion.

 

“Fred, wait a second.” Dean says. Fred opens his mouth to retort, but Dean cuts him off with a wave of his hand. Dean turns his attention back to Rythian and introduces himself. He takes a cautious step forwards. “I’m Dean. Dean Caius.”

 

“Rythian.” Rythian takes a step forwards to offer his hand, but Fred advances like a storm, pushing himself between Dean and Rythian. His eyes are narrowed to slits.

 

“He’s a _demon_ , Dean.” Fred snarls. Dean is relaxes entirely after a moment of silence.

 

There’s a light tug on the edge of Rythian’s mind. He opens his link wide open and lets it wash over both men. Fred is warm; Dean is cool. His eyes sparkle when Rythian inhales sharply, as if he knew all of your secrets before you did.

 

“He’s okay, Fred. He saved us back there.”

 

“ _Demon_.” Fred points at Rythian with the barrel of his shotgun.

 

“Nephilim.” Dean points towards himself. “If he was evil, I’d know.”

 

Fred’s lips thin. Dean makes a compelling argument.

 

“We’d be happy to give you a ride back into the city.” Dean pushed Fred away lightly and reached out to shake Rythian’s hand. Their touch was electrified; a sharp shock ran up Rythian’s arm when he shook Dean’s hand.

 

“What did you say your name was again?"

 

“Dean Caius.” Rythian inspected his hand.

 

Where Dean had touched Rythian, the sores on his palm were healed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This can also be found on Tumblr, (actually-grantward)  
> Thank you to the awesome, Sheepwhoarepurple, for beta-reading this for me.

**Author's Note:**

> This can also be found on Tumblr , under the same name.  
> Wow, this took a long time. Just wanted to say thank you to _everyone_ who's stuck with me this entire time! You're all so amazing!  
>  Thank you to the awesome, Sheepwhoarepurple, for beta-reading this for me.


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